Customer Reviews

No Longer Any Place but Here

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In this computer age of ours, we talk about "real time" as if it were a category of mind and not the fleeting substance of our lives. But in poem after carefully crafted poem, Stephanie Coyne DeGhett reminds us that it is in the moment that our human lives find shape and meaning. A ride to an auto repair shop becomes a love poem; a fence and gate a metaphor for a daughter's growing independence; and the wet decay of daylilies a reminder of life's fecundity*both at its beginning and at its end. If you look and listen carefully enough, she tells us, you'll find the big things hiding in the little.

*Alan Steinberg, author of Cry of the Leopard and Divided.


Open the door and allow these alluring poems to take you in. Stephanie Coyne DeGhett's poetry is mature and intelligent, but not overwhelming*small things, like a tin of buttons, bring you to the larger things of life*family, love, and loss. This is a beautiful collection.

*Leah Maines, author of Beyond the River.

In this powerful collection, Stephanie Coyne DeGhett has given us poems that almost retrieve the irretrievable. In the poem, "Augury-- " Hole bored, 7/16ths inch bit, straight through to spring/ out pour calls of geese, flying seasons/ in reverse with their return, unsummoning cold.", the images and events from the natural world, suggest that tapping a maple tree for sap in the spring is a way to reverse the march of time. In the season's traditional work, the speaker's faith is confirmed with the sap's promise of new life.

Wanting to bring back a loved-one gone in "Air Medal," takes the reader deep into the experience with the help of a dead viceroy butterfly held in an open palm, "The bright scales of its wings transfix thought,/invite touch, demand disbelief,/as if vibrance alone could reanimate this stillness." The poem encourages us to imagine the very edge of existence, and at the same time savor the creatures and beauty of daily life, which bring us back to the grace of existing in the present. These poems will stay with you and inspire.