As the Sky Begins to Changeis a book of poems to wake the world, lyric anthems for earth and kin.
In his third poetry collection from Red Hen Press, Kim Stafford gathers poems that sing with empathy, humor, witness, and story. Poems in this book have been set to music, quoted in the New York Times, posted online in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, gathered in a chapbook sold to benefit Ukrainian refugees, posted online in response to Supreme Court decisions, composed for a painter's gallery opening, and in other ways engaged with a world at war with itself, testifying for the human project hungry for kinship, exiled from bounty, and otherwise thirsting for the oxygen of healing song.
About the Author :
Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of eighteen books of poetry and prose, including Singer Come from Afar (Red Hen Press) and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared (Trinity University Press). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Harpers, the Atlantic, and other magazines. His books have received Pacific Northwest Book Awards and a Citation for Excellence from the Western States Book Awards. In 2018 he was named Oregon Poet Laureate for a two-year term. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.
Review :
Featured in the Shelf Unbound list of 2024 Indie Summer Reads
"Kim Stafford is a priest and poet, a songwriter and philosopher. Each of these meticulously crafted poems offers the ability to see our interconnected world with a tender, resilient heart that only grows stronger over time. You will come to the book like that lucky raccoon who finds a plum tree in one of the early poems, feasting until you are 'bandit happy, lusty gusto, shaky elbow, roly-poly / on your side helpless with joy."
—James Crews, author of Kindness Will Save the World
"It only takes a few leaves to fall into this retreat. These poems remind me I don't spend enough time outdoors, alone ... I have not lived slow enough ... I haven't eaten enough plums. I have failed to see beauty and brilliant complexity everywhere. They remind me that those who suffer from war and oppression need poems, and that every childhood moment that shaped us is a poem eye-to-eye with earth."
—Frank X Walker, author of Masked Man, Black
"This inspiring new collection speaks to this moment of dilemma and decision: What was our / certainty is all in ruins, so we sing glory, glory, glory.' Poems here bring music to the book's 'little anthems of thought to advance the vast change of heart demanded of us all. 'From the ordinary,' Stafford says, 'you must rise into helpful dreaming.' In this book, Stafford dreams and sings the world new, reader by reader."
—Thomas R. Smith, author of Storm Island and Medicine Year
Poet Q&A: Kim Stafford finds poetic fodder in nature, war, boyhood, and writing in new book, ‘As the Sky Begins to Change’ Oregon Artswatch
