Art by Marek Piwnicki, Unsplash
Debut Collection from Kelsay Books!
A Summons on the Wind is a recognition and reflection of the moment we inhabit in all its despair and fragile splendor. This collection brings to mind the last line of W.S. Merwin’s Rain Light, “even though the whole world is burning.” The failures and consequences of our species’ sins against the environment and against ourselves are conveyed with vivid images that scorch and smolder. Yet a subtle and unobtrusive spirituality insists on gratitude for the beauty that surrounds us in nature, community and family. Grief is accompanied here by a longing for things to be different, for us to be better, and a quiet acknowledgement that sometimes we are.
—Roxanne Doty, author of Out Stealing Water
In A Summons on the Wind, Alfred Fournier’s poems are woven together with a thread of spirituality, a questioning and noticing, as the poet contemplates the global, the mythological, and the family. The author wonders if a glacier minds that it is melting, and whether the kingdom of heaven is “a net,” “a Roman mob,” or a “box of maniacs.” We meet siblings and a mother the speaker sometimes confused with “the Virgin Mary” and a dad for whom smoking and “showing up on time, ready to work” were forms of prayer. This is a powerful collection of poems that will stay with you long after you finish the book.
—Susan Vespoli, author of Cactus as Bad Boy and Blame it on the Serpent
With “The sun and seasons hurtling by without us,” Alfred Fournier conjures an image that is to the point and extends our imaginations. This could be what William Carlos Williams was thinking of with his famous lines on the difficulty of getting the news from poems yet still finding them as being necessary for a life with understanding. A Summons on the Wind also includes some scenes refreshed by their journey through layers of memory. There is a balance here of reading pleasure to the individual with a way to realize where are as a community.
—David Chorlton, author of Life Goes On and Unmapped Worlds
Available from:
from: A Summons on the Wind
3rd Wednesday, Aug 2022
The Indianapolis Review, No. 20, Spring 2022
Cagibi, Issue 18, April 2023
Months to Years, Fall 2022 Issue
Cathexsis Northwest Press
June 2019