As she contends with forces that threaten to uproot what she loves, the farm wife emerges as a prophetic voice from America's heartland, embracing a concept of community that includes the dead and the living, neighbors and strangers, cultivated fields and ditches thick with milkweed.
"The farm wife names children after beloved cows, plays rook, and wants to be buried in a root cellar. In poem after poem we see what might appear to be a sheltered, insular life in its true and astonishing expansiveness. These are poems of both intensity and calm beauty, transformative in their vision of the holiness in the everyday." --Jill Peláez Baumgaertner, Author, What Cannot Be Fixed and Poetry Editor, The Christian Century
Quote: One of the closing farm wife poems, "The farm wife reviews the Tornado Theater at Menno-Hof Museum," reports that "In the rubble of Eli Yoder's house / all they found intact was a glass jug / with a carving stuck inside: 'Fear God' / on one side-- 'God Is Love' on the other. / Eli took that as a sign of the Almighty's power, / but I believe whirling wind spins the bottle / and God is in the dark with us, / not writing down what happens next."
The Author: Shari Wagner wasIndiana Poet Laureate 2016-2017 and is author of two books of poems: The Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana and Evening Chore.Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including North American Review, Shenandoah, The Christian Century, The Writer's Almanac, and American Life in Poetry. She has taught creative writing in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, community centers, libraries, and nursing homes. She teaches for the Indiana Writers Center; Indiana University-Purdue University's Religion, Spirituality and the Arts Seminar; and Bethany Theological Seminary's graduate program in theopoetics and writing.

The Farm Wife's Almanac (Dreamseeker Poetry)

Literature & Fiction

Wagner, Shari

Poetry

DreamSeeker Books

"These poems balance between endings and beginnings, between the twilit melancholy of evening and the jubilant rebirth of morning. A grandfather loses his memory, while a toddler meets his shadow for the first time. Survivors tend the graves of ancestors, while the stories of those ancestors, handed down, light the way for those now living. Even while she laments the losses that beset any life, Wagner also celebrates the goodness of growing things in poems charged with the clear light of praise." --Scott Russell Sanders, Author, Hunting for Hope

Evening Chore (Dreamseeker Poetry Series Vol 3)

Cascadia Publishing House

This book you're holding represents years' worth of discipline and labor, of time and travel and, as you'll discover, the pure joy of attention and love of language. The thing that makes a poet undertake a particular project is a mystery, finally. One day Shari Wagner was called to understand something, and the journey she decided to take was a meditative one, through the labyrinth of nature and time in a particular place in this world. The result is a gift, this collection of poems. I don't know of a writer, with the exceptions of Gene Stratton-Porter (the subject of several of these poems) or Jessamyn West, who has written with as much care and specificity of Indiana's natural beauty as Wagner does in this book. When Wagner sees an oriole at 10 o'clock in a tree she writes that "it's like opening / the tab on an advent calendar." I can't think of a better description of the experience of reading these poems. ~Susan NevilleAuthor of Sailing the Inland Sea: On Writing, Literature, and Land

The Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana

Bottom Dog Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagner, Shari. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wagner, Shari

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wagner, Shari. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Farm Wife's Almanac (Dreamseeker Poetry)

Evening Chore (Dreamseeker Poetry Series Vol 3)

The Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana