How to Hold a Flying River: Poems

Fleeting fragrances, fragments of dream and memory, secrets whispered in the night, painful collisions with reality, consolations drawn from music and clouds: these poems move relentlessly through shadow and light as they circle, question, and confront the turbulence of being human. They stretch sensitive drumskins over frames of close observation, resonant understatement, and silences rich with insight. Ultimately, the poems are exhortations--for heaven to "rest your head on my knees"--and invitations for the reader to enter a space where the ineffable dwells.

Martha Kalin is the 2019 winning recipient of the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award and author of the chapbook, Afterlife and Mango. She holds degrees from Brandeis University and the University of Michigan, where she received a Major Hopwood Award for Poetry. In addition to writing, she has spent much of her professional life working to improve services for the vulnerable and disenfranchised in health care settings. She lives and writes in Denver, Colorado.