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Shaking the Kaleidoscope
by Kate Kingston
Publisher: Lost Horse Press
76 Pages/60 Poems
ISBN 978-0-9839975-7-3 (2012)
Price: $18 US $21 Canada
To Order: www.losthorsepress.org
(catalog P-5, third book from the top)
Lost Horse Press
105 Lost Horse Lane Sandpoint, 
Idaho 83864
Voice: 208.255.4410
Email: losthorsepress@mindspring.com

Advance Praise:

Kate Kingston's Shaking the Kaleidoscope invites us in to legendary, multi-hued gardens flooded
with Andalusian sun and suffused with the gleam of labyrinthine moons. In these poems, we trace
intricate pathways of the imagination traversed by García Lorca and Neruda; but the poet, trusted
guide, continually bids us to raise our eyes as well to the rugged contours of mesa, butte, and
escarpment–the expansive New World landscapes that extend the numinous power of garden and patio,
the incantatory prospects of memory and dream. In these imagistically rich and variegated poems,
we dwell in the company of a traveler whose discoveries encompass dimensions both personal and
mythic, and whose illuminations dazzle our sensibilities and deepen our intimations of wonder.
–Carolyne Wright, Blue Lynx Prize, American Book Award

Kate Kingston gives us a world of rare complexity where language and place are a strong part of
the poet’s experience. In this “Kaleidoscope” she revisits Lorca’s poems, family memories, Mexican
ruins, and even an airplane journey where Kingston asks us to think of “oxygen masks as halos.”
Shaking the Kaleidoscope is a dazzling collection of poems.
–Jennifer Clement, President of PEN Mexico

If Lorca and Neruda spoke through a feminine medium, they might do so through Kate Kingston. Her
poems, like theirs, forge thrilling combinations from the colors, textures, and the objects of this
world. They speak from the landscapes and voices of Spain and Old Mexico, which clearly have fed her
imagination, but they offer, as well, glimpses of a contemporary American woman’s rites of passage
now in full possession of her powers of empathy, devotion and perception.
–Leslie Ullman, author of Slow Work through Sand

This is a poet who can write about the domestic and the cosmic, the micro and macro views of the
world. But more than any such analysis indicates, they are good reading, linguistically subtle and
interesting, capturing a variety of moods and subjects. This is a voice we will certainly want to
hear more of.
–Richard Jackson, author of Resonance

About the Author:

Kate Kingston is the author of In My Dreams Neruda, El Río de Las Animas Perdidas en
Purgatorio and Unwritten Letters. She is a recipient of the W.D. Snodgrass Award for
Poetic Endeavor and Excellence, the Ruth Stone Prize, the Atlanta Review International Publicat-
ion Prize, and the Colorado Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Poetry. Kingston has
served as Language Department Chairperson at the College of Eastern Utah and Professor of Spanish
and Writing at Trinidad State College. She currently lives and writes in Trinidad, Colorado.

From the Book:

Three Wishes
by Kate Kingston

I gave my magic to my daughter, covered her
with blue ink at birth, gave her spoons and vowels,
gave her tonsils and voice. I gave my magic
to my daughter, filled her basinet with pens, boots,
notebooks, gave my magic to my daughter,
filled her veins with ink, her mouth with alphabet.

My pen tastes like bitter porcelain, like manganese,
nickel, like scorched metal, smells like hot
tar, burnt cedar, smells like smoke rings. I gave
my pen to my daughter so she can draw a straight
line to my mother, so she can sketch a woman's
laughter on the last page next to my father's cigar.

My boots smell like deep grass, crushed snow,
smell like swamp moss, lake minnows. I gave my boots
to my daughter, the taste of leather on her tongue
and in her nostrils the smell of my father's cigar,
to my daughter so she can crush leaves underfoot,
so she can hike into winter, snowboard on her back.
My notebook tastes like pitted cherries, Vermouth,
tastes like papyrus, a hint of lime. My notebook smells
like vanilla and sweat, like butterflies, traffic fumes, wisteria
and charcoal. I gave my notebook to my daughter so she
can inhale exhaust, speak Portuguese, so she can hear wings,
to my daughter so she can smell smoke and scribble love notes.

I gave my magic to my daughter – my pen, boots,
notebook. My daughter lost my pen in the river,
in murky water, cattails, bullfrogs. She lost my boots in traffic,
in car exhaust. She lost my boots to hot asphalt and burnt
tar. She lost my notebook to the Tower of Babel, lost
my notebook to seven languages and an apostrophe.