All Hands Lost Published by Finishing Line Press
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OASIS
Almond milk in his hands,
goat shadow under olive tree,
dune blown sideways
toward divided sea. Eyes
that very shape. Kohl,
fire, husk. Robes white
as cassava meat. Skin
black as vulture wing.
The desert cannot find us.
Outside hears only
wet animal cries. Golden
chain sewn through:
our honeyed, vinegar lies.
Praise for All Hands Lost
With her gift for indelible images and lyric precision, Laura Juliet Wood's poems cross continents to bring us funerary wreaths, a cymbal clash of wings, and Jesus and Guadalupe bright as comic book pages. Vivid and brimming with spiritual intelligence, Wood's language distills the beauty of the every day and the extraordinary, the loss and the consolation, the curse and the blessing.
— Traci Brimhall, author of Our Lady of the Ruins
Laura Juliet Wood's keen intelligence inside these poems reveals luminous, alert landscapes and heartscapes in crafted language that tantalizes, pierces. All Hands Lost is a vivid record; details meticulously slice through into ardent shimmer, poem after poem. These poems ache with a restless, brilliant looking: they resound with deep music and a scholar's passion for the global traditions of her craft…a powerful new voice has come into the fold, sharing, as she says, "the glistening bones of my history.”
— Judyth Hill, author of Black Hollyhock, First Light
Here is a poet who doesn't shrink from the big subjects. The poems are packed with stunning images: two yellow butterflies with their "cymbal clash of wings" in a summer garden. The poems are sensual Zen dreams, mysterious, odd, and ultimately fearless. Laura Juliet Wood is on her way.
— Mary Ann McFadden, author of Eye of the Blackbird
Listen to Readings from All Hands Lost
Dreaming During the Advent of Rain Published by Finishing Line Press
Their Little Room
The bride’s joy is just-watered,
fern green—
When the mouth smiles,
the heart had better smile, too.
Scorpion, melon, boot.
The moon waning, the teapot spout.
Peach blossoms are the first sign of spring.
Wrapping and unwrapping, the bride pleads,
“I want to be a window, not a door.”
Everything begins with desire.
The groom walks in choreographed silence
through black water, diamonds, pine—
Their cupboard is full but soon empties.
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Praise for dreaming during the advent of rain
Dreaming During the Advent of Rain is at once heartbreaking and uplifting, elegiac and joyous. Meticulously crafted and filled with startling images, Wood’s poems teach us—through her deeply personal and profound lyrics—
about our own lives, dreams, love, beauty, and loss—this is what the best poetry does, after all— “bells ringing everywhere.”
— Julia Johnson, author of Subsidence
Laura Juliet Wood weaves an elegant and lyrically engaging account of a nearly overwhelming constellation of life events, including her husband’s terminal illness, eventual demise, and the birth of her daughter. The finely crafted poems collected in Dreaming During the Advent of Rain are deeply affecting—a galaxy of feelings, colors and textures—though never woeful and reveal a subtlety of mind and delicacy of spirit with a reason to go on.
— Philip Alvaré
With unflinching attention and indelible insight, Laura Juliet Wood addresses head-on the full spectrum of grief to grace at the heart of our lives. In language both quotidian and extraordinary, she places these poems on the page like little gift boxes asking to be reached into. Open one. Lift out its treasure. Slip on its mantle of redemption.
— K. Howard, author of Uncertainty Principle