Linda Neal Reising's collection Navigation is both a lyric, melodic experience and an examination of histories, both intimate and vast. Navigation, with its carefully crafted poems of sonic resonance, is a sort of sacred harp singing in book form. It is a book about the history of America-indigenous and working-class, geologic and pop cultural-but it also pulls the reader close through deft and engaging storytelling. The arrangement of these poems carries the reader along-like a beautifully realized song-culminating in moments of incredible human tenderness. -Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come From Is Gone
I have read much poetry. I know many poets. I believe the job of good poetry and good poets is to move their readers, and oh Lord, has Linda Neal Reising's new book, Navigation, moved me. What can I possibly say to prepare a reader for what lies ahead as they navigate through the four parts that make up this book? The opening poem of Part I, "After Learning That a Woman and Her Baby Were Killed in the Bombing of a Ukrainian Maternity Hospital" seizes you in its grasp and propels you page after page. The Americana, the well-chosen epigraphs, the Native understanding of the land and the trials of poor families during hard times are masterful. This is a book not to be missed.
-Ron Wallace, author of Life Is a Disappearing Act
If one were sailing the sea of life "in a little paper boat," the waypoints leading to some proverbial safe harbor would be easily recognized along the course so capably charted in Reising's Navigation. With her distinctive imagination...the cardinal "slipped off her wings, and chose to walk all the way back to heaven," and her exceptional percipience of real life experiences, Reising reveals the mastery of her poetic skills. And in spite of life's obstacles, Reising suggests a safe harbor is within sight...a place where "sparrows sky-write lovelorn letters, where cedars keep sentry..." where "the apricot tree grows tiny moons."
-Karen Kay Knauss, poet, Oklahoma Book Award winner for SAND, At the Mercy of Wind
