Each Unkept Secret -- Donna Prinzmetal

<p>Donna Prinzmetal may question how her poetry can possibly "measure the distance / between the living and the dead," but it does just that and more: many of her poems both measure and <em>collapse</em> that distance, creating a riveting lyric voice that can fashion "the right syntax for grieving." With markedly fresh and vivid imagery, she employs memory's non-linearity, giving us striking elegies, eulogies, and tributes-poems to both her dead and living loved-ones. Taking us into her confidence, telling us her secrets, Prinzmetal gives us a rare gift. Courageous and movingly intimate, her voice speaks the poignant music of mortality, "the cadence between pain's husky gasps."</p><p>-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita, author of <em>My Kindred</em></p><p> </p><p>One marvel of <em>Each Unkept Secret</em> is how the sequence weaves deeper into a life by way of evocative touchstones. As the striking poems wend through detail and damage with a quiet, relentless courage, we come to care for the fullness of a family. Yet, Prinzmetal is wily, too. What we know is as important as what we don't, and the absence makes room for a haunting, underlying silence.</p><p>-John C. Morrison, author of <em>Monkey Island</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p>Though she describes loss as "a foreign country I had visited / against my will," in these searing poems, Donna Prinzmetal maps the territory of loss and grief with a compelling emotional precision. Each Unkept Secret </em>is a revelatory