Part American history, part poetic memoir, part multifaceted and lyrical study of tender human life, Jacqueline Kudler's Ripenings is a trajectory, a richly detailed arco iris of ancestors, intimate family, lifelong loves, inevitable loss. "Revelation begins in attention," the poet writes, and whether that attention manifests here in paeans to New York, to life in Northern California's landscape, or to the people who have accompanied her through her life, love is what shines through these poems, these ripenings-this book is a gift of love laid at our feet.
Her third (and final) collection of her poetry, Ripenings follows this award-winning poet's acclaimed volumes, The Sacred Precinct and Easing into Dark.
"In Ripenings, Jacqueline Kudler's rich imagery and love of language celebrate the people and places that have inhabited her world. Nature commands a major presence in these pages: its bliss and blight, how it reaches out to us, offering a place for healing to occur. Death is also here, in poems limning the long California drought or addressing now-dead long-time friends and family members. Kudler writes,
What more can anyone ask but
that Death, the ever-dependable
friend, will know I'm ready before
I do, will steal into my room while
I'm deep in dreams and lay his
glacial gift at my feet, so gently, so
tenderly, that I'll never wake at all.
These poems are brilliantly alive!"
-Lily Iona MacKenzie, author of California Dreaming
