Description
There are witty, clever poets and there are deep heartfelt poets, but few combine the two talents as brilliantly as Clela Reed. How can two covers contain both the rapier wit of “Rectangles” and the gut-searching depths of “Farrowing”? And yet Reed’s book not only contains these polar opposites but entertains us from start to finish. Recommended for all current residents of planet Earth.
Dan Veach, founder of Atlanta Review, author of Elephant Water and Lunchboxes
These are thoughtful poems—personal and introspective while also connecting with the reader. From Alabama, where newly birthed piglets “warmed, grew pink with the effort of rooting” to Italy, Greece, Cuba or Neruda’s home in Chile where “What heals us, find us / in the pulse of moments— / sun on skin, the dawn song of the tapacula,” Reed gives us sometimes tender, sometimes playful snapshots with precise observation, graceful diction, and a confident philosophy.
Karen Paul Holmes, author of Untying the Knot and No Such Thing as Distance
What to make of the sewing basket,/left out to air and forgotten,/that rooted itself and grew? Clela Reed asks in Or Current Resident, and the question might be at the heart of this gorgeous, lush collection of lyrics and meditations. Delighting in the natural beauty of the world and training her eye on what others might miss, Reed connects the psychic and the tactile, the familiar and the strange, and the forgotten with the discovered. We are all just current residents in this world, Reed suggests, abiding in a beautiful place that we scarcely understand.
Jeff Newberry, author of Brackish
