Waterborne

Janet Joyner s varied poems include lyrical descriptions of the natural world and draw deft portraits of people and the complicated connections between us. Waterborne is threaded with vivid images and insights.

Sometimes they are splendid, such as fallen leaves in such a mass / it seemed the sky had turned sea/and spilled the sun at our feet ; sometimes wry, as when the wife of God begins by saying, I could have told you it would end / this way, and ends by suggesting that God Give the grasses another chance ; and sometimes tragic, as in her extraordinary poem, What the Egg Knows, showing us the kid hung on a fence post to watch dawn die over Laramie, how he is no different from you or me, like any creature swimming or striding / in search of his bliss.
--Ellen Bass, author of Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love