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I imagine the moment before / that moment we can never go back to, the poet tells us in this collection about the spaces between, the verges. These verses fulfill what poetry is meant to express: emotion beyond definition, like the ache of longing to slow down time. Dahl uses cats, figs, polar bears, aging parents to hint at the heaven you have never been able to chart. She wakes the wild in all of us that longs to range fast and far / through what I can see and into / what I cannot even imagine.
-Joanne M. Clarkson, author of The Fates and Hospice House
Chris Dahl's Not Now But Soon foreshadows and forecasts minute and monumental griefs and joys as they also simultaneously reach into metaphor and memory to reflect what has come to pass. The poems accumulate their meanings like snow-the satisfying kind that sticks and so delights in the Pacific Northwest-even as it causes daily, generational hazards. This collection's intimacy of the familial set against the seasonal generates a compelling, cyclical read.
-Sandra Yannone, author of Boats for Women and The Glass Studio
I believe this voice, so at home in her garden, so attuned to the seasons and the coming of fall. That imagery works both on literal and metaphorical levels, and while there's wistfulness, even longing sometimes, for things to stay as they are, the voice never stoops to sentimentality. I appreciate the craft of these poems, the straightforward diction, and clear narrative. I never wonder where we are, who's speaking or what's going on. The metaphors feel natural, yet surprising, as a good metaphor must be. "The List of Griefs" uses metaphor masterfully: "there is avalanche grief / and quicksand grief / and the fierce grief that stamps like elephants / protecting their young." I confidently and emphatically choose Not Now but Soon as the winning manuscript.
-Emily Ransdell, Award Judge, author of One Finch Singing, 2022 Concrete Wolf Louis Award Winner
