Poetry. The book is divided into two sections, "Tenant" and "Transit," and takes as its fundamental metaphor the fact that light from some stars reaches us long after the star itself has imploded. Poems in the first section focus on the body, on permanence, and poems in the second focus on movement, the ephemeral. These poems reflect the impressions left by all the places in which she has lived—Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Denmark, and prairie pothole country.

Bodies of Light

Literature & Fiction

Kildegaard, Athena

Poetry

Red Dragonfly Press

Poetry. VENTRILOQUY brings together four poem sequences that throw the author's voice in different directions. "Garden of Tongues, Garden of Eyes" sings, in formally similar poems, of many flowers through imagined myth and stories. The poems in "Divination," also formally similar, consider whether it's possible to divine characters through action. A third sequence of formally loose poems treats human desire, foible, and obsession through imagined saints—the saint of big data, the oil saint, the citizen saint, the sorry saint, and others. A final sequence of short prose poems depicts still life paintings and how they point away from the stilled objects on display out to a beautiful and imperfect world. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes surreal, VENTRILOQUY explores human longing for control, wonder, and meaning.

Ventriloquy

Tinderbox Editions

Poetry. In COURSE, Kildegaard traces the course of her mother's life and death, and of her own grief. At the same time, it follows the course of the river where her mother's ashes were placed. "The poems in Athena Kildegaard's COURSE contain multitudes: garter snakes, bats, herons, wild rhubarb, 'the thousand / reed-hidden / black-birds.' But their central concern surrounds the complex life and death of a mother, and attendant mourning for her. Trust and doubt coexist in these pages, and the natural world offers solace but never complete reassurance: 'How vain to seek certainty,' Kildegaard writes. Indeed, the book ends with a poem comprised of spacious questions. As readers, we are caught in the current of this marvelous book, which is as honest and deep-flowing and eternal as the river that passes through its pages." -- Connie Wanek

Course

Prairie Midden

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Books by Kildegaard, Athena

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kildegaard, Athena. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Bodies of Light

Ventriloquy

Course

Prairie Midden