"Nearly every poem in this brilliant debut book ventures into unknown territory. The authority of the voice, which I trust, comes from the knowledge brought home from these excursions, which are truly original. We often think of originality as a brand-new way of seeing something, but it's actually the opposite. Genuine originality, which this book has in spades, comes from a return to origins, from going back to the source to see it freshly, free of all other responses and words ever attached to it. This quality is rare, especially in early work. Iron String is a startling, masterful, surprising collection...."
~ Chase Twichell
"Annie Lighthart’s Iron String is a stunning collection of poetry. In ecopoetical terms it locates the more-than-human in life itself, through self-questioning spells of a dweller who finds the numina in everything. It is a poetry that takes what we call place—the struggle between the stationary and flux—and out of it makes a life, and out of that life imagines the world that watches itself ushered into being. We talk about magic lightly in poetry, as if it were brushstroke, or rare technique. For Annie Lighthart it is a way of seeing the world in necessary terms, with stunning moments of both blunt refusals and loving acknowledgements."
~ William Olsen
"Iron String bears a title offering its readers a compelling promise—that of hard, beautiful song. And this remarkable first collection keeps that promise, manifesting a scope wide enough, sure enough, a vision deep enough to contain the music created when such a string is plucked, a string that can "resound for a year.” Intensely lyrical, numinously archetypal, Annie Lighthart’s fine poems both posit and prove the power of poetry’s music."
~ Paulann Petersen
From the Publisher:
Taking its title from Ralph Waldo Emerson's injunction, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string," Annie Lighthart's first collection of poems lives up to the complexities of that sound,
that difficult music of living. Written with a mature lyricism, these poems weave a thread of song through destruction and doubt, through quiet rooms and resilient hours. When reading Iron String we awaken to our own lives, into a world that is wider, deeper, and more dangerously beautiful than we realized before. ~ Airlie Press
~ Chase Twichell
"Annie Lighthart’s Iron String is a stunning collection of poetry. In ecopoetical terms it locates the more-than-human in life itself, through self-questioning spells of a dweller who finds the numina in everything. It is a poetry that takes what we call place—the struggle between the stationary and flux—and out of it makes a life, and out of that life imagines the world that watches itself ushered into being. We talk about magic lightly in poetry, as if it were brushstroke, or rare technique. For Annie Lighthart it is a way of seeing the world in necessary terms, with stunning moments of both blunt refusals and loving acknowledgements."
~ William Olsen
"Iron String bears a title offering its readers a compelling promise—that of hard, beautiful song. And this remarkable first collection keeps that promise, manifesting a scope wide enough, sure enough, a vision deep enough to contain the music created when such a string is plucked, a string that can "resound for a year.” Intensely lyrical, numinously archetypal, Annie Lighthart’s fine poems both posit and prove the power of poetry’s music."
~ Paulann Petersen
From the Publisher:
Taking its title from Ralph Waldo Emerson's injunction, "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string," Annie Lighthart's first collection of poems lives up to the complexities of that sound,
that difficult music of living. Written with a mature lyricism, these poems weave a thread of song through destruction and doubt, through quiet rooms and resilient hours. When reading Iron String we awaken to our own lives, into a world that is wider, deeper, and more dangerously beautiful than we realized before. ~ Airlie Press
** For more information on British artist Richard Spare
who created the beautiful snowdrop on the cover of Iron String,
please click here **
