Kindness in Winter
by Sally Nacker
24 Poems ~ 42 Pages
Price: $16.00
Format: 6” x 9” ~ Perfect Bound
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN: 978-1-954353-37-4
To Order: Kelsay Books


ABOUT THE BOOK:


Connecticut is poet Sally Nacker’s home state. As suggested in the spelling of
that state, Nacker is an artist who takes seriously a poet’s responsibility to
“connect” with her readers. These unique and original poems explore tensions
between the outer world of nature and the inner world of the human spirit.
Nacker is observant of her surroundings and makes of her surroundings poems
that showcase her love-connection with nature and the pure enjoyment those
connections bring to people. Her poetic brush paints a landscape of snow, sky,
clouds, flowers, animals, and people that set these poems and this poet apart as
something special. In this post-pandemic age when many cry out for relief from
their own “winter” of isolation, Sally Nacker’s Kindness in Winter, is like a
friendly hand reaching out in love.


ADVANCE PRAISE:


Sally Nacker’s Kindness in Winter is a bright blossom of a book, generously
populated with birds, gardens, sunlight, and the occasional visiting doe. It
comes as a welcome gift for readers seeking respite from the world’s prevailing
despair, remining us to “quietly observe snow / dissolve into a field of flow-
ers.” These are poems that are beautifully crafted (many of them gracefully
rhymed and metered) and often reminiscent of Dickinson, Robert Francis, or
Mary Oliver in the precise observations of the natural world.
—Marilyn L. Taylor, Poet Laureate of Wisconsin (2009-2010), author of Going
Wrong and Step on a Crack.

“Because you studied / the error of a speck of white / cloud,” begins the
speaker in a particularly evocative poem by Sally Nacker; what was otherwise
perfect becomes, somehow, imperfectly beautiful, and thus, in this poem,
“bluer.” It’s to the beautiful imperfection that Nacker has turned her acute
poet’s eye in her new collection, Kindness in Winter—so that at some point, the
inward and the outward meet one another in common tremble. Situated in the
natural world, these poems take a kind of interior flight, each marking its sure
course.
—Carol Ann Davis, poet and essayist, author of Atlas Hour and The Nail in the
Tree

In looking into the minutiae of the natural world—the eyes of a wren, footprints
of a bird in the snow, morning light on magnolia petals—Kindness in Winter
conveys their hugeness with understated wonder and a softly resonating music.
—Henry Lyman, author of The Land Has Its Say

As in her previous two collections—Vireo and Night Snow—Sally’s poems
continue to hold a deep clarity and profound stillness within them. Her
crystalline evocations of winter make me feel a reverence for a season I have
often dreaded. I return to Sally’s work when I want to abide more fully in the
peace and beauty of the world. Like the wild phlox in her poem of that name,
Sally’s poems “preach a goodness and a fragrant / prayer. They ignite the air
and astonish.”
—Andrea Potos, author of Mothershell and Marrow of Summer


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Sally Nacker was a recipient of the Connecticut Audubon Society’s Edwin
Way Teale Writer-in-Residence at Trail Wood award in the summer of 2020.
She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Sally is
the author of two previous collections—Vireo (2015) and Night Snow (2017)—
also published by Kelsay Books. Her poems continue to appear in journals.
Sally lives in Connecticut with her husband and their two cats.


FROM THE BOOK:


The Visit
by Sally Nacker

Rounding the corner of a back road
slow, I saw a gentle doe
very close to my window
tucked in a swarm of orange lilies.

Her head came very near to my car,
as though she were going to cross the road.
Then, in a slow-motion instant, her soft eyes
brushed my own gaze from a place far

and ancient, and I knew the deer
as she curved her neck and body
fish-like, and returned to the swarm
of the tiger lilies, so open and warm.

Return to: