“While Ann Iverson makes direct references to contemporary political events, she mutes their potential polarizing effect by considering them within a non-politicized context: her life. Consequently, no matter one's position on our nation's response to September 11, to the war on terror, or the president, one can appreciate these poems.”—Rachel Lintula
Ann Iverson’s second collection of poetry conveys the emotional journey of a son’s first and second deployment to Baghdad, as well as the spiritual and physical adjustment to a move from the inner city to a country-like suburb. In spare, distinctive imagery, Iverson ponders the personal, familial, and social transitions brought about by life change. She thoughtfully considers the tension within relationships that change often engenders and by doing so, personalizes a national tragedy and the subsequent war in Iraq.
In “Even Though” she juxtaposes the surreal war and its reality with her common life experience: “I cleared my throat and raised my voice, / though the city did not respond. / And the soldiers stay away too long, / for years and years and years / Even though we call to them. / Even though they hear.”
 Ann Iverson received her MALS and MFA from Hamline University in Minnesota. Her writing has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor and has appeared in The Oklahoma Review and MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry. Her first collection, Come Now to the Window, was published by the Laurel Poetry Collective. She currently is the director of arts and sciences at Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis. She and her husband live in East Bethel, Minnesota.

Definite Space: Poems

Literature & Fiction

Iverson, Ann

Poetry

Holy Cow! Press

In Iverson’s newest collection we meet again an extraordinary lyric poet keeping faith in language, nature, the heart. We like time since we have no choice, but choice or not, she creates a cartography of memory; and time, is Iverson’s great subject. A poet wise about the world, her poems travel with vertical energy; then she slows us down with prose poems of personal history that keep us bound to this poet. Mouth of Summer, eloquent in much, takes its place next to Iverson’s other beautiful books. 
 —Deborah Keenan, author of eleven collections of poetry, and From Tiger to Prayer, a book of writing ideas 
 This is a book of contrasts and paradoxes; the ethereal, a feather is forgiveness / hard to catch in the wind—the human, They rolled her out of recovery. / She looked sad without her glasses— / eyes small, watery. Iverson moves between contrasts in a unique way using image after image, while shifting syntax to steer the reader to unexpected places. This book strives to keep the heart open even as we struggle—Many windows has the heart. / They remain open so birds can fly in and out. 
 —Kirsten Dierking, author of Tether, Northern Oracle, and One Red Eye 
 In unabashedly lyrical lines, Iverson addresses the loneliness inherent in time’s passage and our attempts to forge meaningful connections in spite of it. We know that time / on earth / does not have room / for everyone. In one poem, a father drops by with chocolates as a gesture of love; in another, the narrator gives the umbrella of a deceased friend to a woman to protect her from a storm. What we do not know / is the road / where love will go—though Iverson suggests we may not always succeed in staving off the loneliness and sorrow, this collection is testament to the artist’s will to keep trying. 
 —Ariane Sandford, published poet, educator

Mouth of Summer

Kelsay Books

Then Eat My Love

Genre Fiction

Southern Arizona Press

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Books by Iverson, Ann