Each Unkept Secret

Donna Prinzmetal may question how her poetry can possibly ＂measure the distance / between the living and the dead,＂ but it does just that and more: many of her poems both measure and collapse that distance, creating a riveting lyric voice that can fashion ＂the right syntax for grieving.＂ With markedly fresh and vivid imagery, she employs memory’s non-linearity, giving us striking elegies, eulogies, and tributes-poems to both her dead and living loved-ones. Taking us into her confidence, telling us her secrets, Prinzmetal gives us a rare gift. Courageous and movingly intimate, her voice speaks the poignant music of mortality, ＂the cadence between pain’s husky gasps.＂

-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, author of My Kindred

One marvel of Each Unkept Secret is how the sequence weaves deeper into a life by way of evocative touchstones. As the striking poems wend through detail and damage with a quiet, relentless courage, we come to care for the fullness of a family. Yet, Prinzmetal is wily, too. What we know is as important as what we don’t, and the absence makes room for a haunting, underlying silence.

-John C. Morrison, author of Monkey Island

Though she describes loss as ＂a foreign country I had visited / against my will,＂ in these searing poems, Donna Prinzmetal maps the territory of loss and grief with a compelling emotional precision. Each Unkept Secret is a revelatory book.

-John Brehm, author of Dharma Talk and No Day at the Beach