Joyful Annotations to the World Outside (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781639807581)

In Joyful Annotations to the World Outside, everywhere is atmosphere and signs, each poem a field deep and human. Daughter, partner, mother, Carol Sadtler is a grateful, compassionate poet who knows you can't hold anything for long. Still, her poetry opens out, always more space for more life, "fresh images in new frames - some garden always growing."

-Chris Solís Green, author and Distinguished Writer in Residence at DePaul University

In today's mood of swagger and slash, Carol Sadtler's clear-eyed reports from the field present a life of deep attention to her cherished clan and the living world. With an unfussy style, she achieves an almost stoic ecstasy as the narrator thrills to the flash of a red wing, the green scent of crushed herbs, the candlelight gleam on the Black Christ. Water figures not only as a healing force for sick loved ones and withering nature, but also as a rhythmic power far older and stronger than human life. The book's quiet focus on walking, swimming, and close observation lifts the reader above our fractured times into the mystery of a realm beyond knowing.

-Patrice Boyer Claeys, author, Lovely Daughter of the Shattering and The Machinery of Grace

In Joyful Annotations to the World Outside, Carol Sadtler offers a book of wise and quiet beauty. The book straddles the fine line between lament and celebration, between fear and joy, a paradox theologians often call "ripeness." Her anchor is nature herself - doves and crows, mollusks and dogs, hickories and Black-eyed Susans - as the narrator embraces and transcends the broken and the contradictory. From the poem in which a 10-year-old girl feels her power for the first time as she pedals through summer fields, to the observations of a sister in her younger sister's final days, this poet is after truth and meaning, which "we may or may not be / able to bear to know."

-Ralph Hamilton, Board Chair and former Editor of RHINO Poetry

Author: Carol Sadtler
ISBN-10: 1639807586
ISBN-13: 9781639807581
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Language: English
Published: 05/15/2025
Pages: 46
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.17lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.10d