My Grandmother’s Last Letter

Wendy Dunmeyer’s My Grandmother’s Last Letter is as fine-tuned as a debut collection of poetry can be. Expressive and descriptive, all of these poems offer the kind of intimate viewpoints-of their speakers’ days, homes, families, hopes, and hurts-that I most prize as a reader of poetry. I am struck by the way motherhood is shown at both its softest and hardest edges, by the way the women’s lives are treated so elegantly, by the strength of voice. The narrative lines that run throughout Letter are captivating.

-Joey Brown, author of Oklahomaography and The Feral Love Poems

Lyrical, lushly imagined, and occasionally harrowing, My Grandmother’s Last Letter confronts sorrow with aesthetic discipline and opposes cruelty with a fierce faith. Dunmeyer is adept at the sonnet and other forms, and, in this book haunted by family history, her formal sureness and control ride atop a swell of powerful feeling.

-Benjamin Myers, former Oklahoma Poet Laureate and author of The Family Book of Martyrs

Formally diverse and painstaking crafted, the poems of Wendy Dunmeyer’s My Grandmother’s Last Letter dazzle. The collection celebrates the author’s maternal grandmother, an Australian war bride whose faith in God provided respite for her lonely life. Other poems celebrate the prairie, reveal the author’s inventive humor, and explore loneliness enriched by faith and family legacy. A recently deceased mentor inspired the author’s successful search for the elegant word.

-Dr. John Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University