august, green & undeserved

I’m forever in awe of poetry’s ability to tap into what paces beneath the surface, anxious to be seen. Maybe it was the stuffed-down stress of the morning, but the weeping felt like a true connection. At the heart of the poem is the idea that we don’t or can’t always appreciate — or even recognize — love when it’s given to us.

landscape with plywood silhouettes

“the hammock / of my collarbone”

LANDSCAPE WITH PLYWOOD SILHOUETTES by KERRIN MCCADDEN / It’s tempting to say the poems in this collection are “about” divorce, parenting, art, rivers, photos/cameras, ocean, ghosts, loneliness, etc., but it feels more to me to be a book about tenderness. Those other topics/items — grief, cartoons, chairs — are present alongside us as living beings. They’re active in our stories.