Overview

Heartfelt, poetic meditations that explore family dynamics from an accomplished poet of Finnish heritage.In Stars Unseen, Greg Watson fearlessly navigates a path through multi-generational trauma and grief, explores his Finnish-American heritage, and the joys and challenges of single parenting in the present age. It is a clear-eyed collection that seeks hope and redemption in the face of adversity, and manages to pin down the smallest moments for closer examination.

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9781666406917

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Reviews

"""Greg Watson's poems in The Sound of Light address the weather and the seasons of life and death. Yet they are all love poems, beautiful in their quiet knowing, that weathering life and its seasons, is how we love, and that not paying attention to all the beauty and hardship around us, is our death.""- Julia Klatt Singer, author of Untranslatable Tim Nolan (author of Lines} observes that Watson's poems ""begin in the domestic usual and end up somewhere else -- the universal extraordinary."" Saint Paul's first Poet Laureate Carol Connolly calls Watson's work ""sympathetic poems, romantic, kind and brave poems...."""

"""In Greg Watson's Stars Unseen, there is a conjuring of needed words of breath, blood and memory in the recollection of ancestors, childhood and parenthood. There is the sorrow and challenges of the Finnish immigrants who came before him, his harsh childhood of punishments, struggles and deprivation, but also his steady, cherished work of being a present father. While he is the keeper of the family stories, sorrows and secrets, he also shows us how the poet can still dream. Who is to say what is not sacred, what is worthy? There is a quiet resilience in his deeply felt, lyrical language. The poems offer us ways to find light passed down by ancestors and our difficult past to dream another day into waking. The Sielu Lintu, soul bird, appears all throughout these poems drawing fragile maps of hope and all that love we lay claim to.""--Diane Jarvenpa, author of Shylands ""In Stars Unseen, Greg Watson finds poems everywhere he looks--in memory, family history, his own difficult childhood, and golden moments with his young daughter. Whether he considers his childhood struggles, his Finnish heritage, or old photographs, Watson finds a form of wisdom in poem after poem. The collection is evocative, tender, sometimes heart-breaking, and always anchored by his daughter's persistent questions and his own joy with her arrival.""--Tim Nolan, author of Lines""Greg Watson's Stars Unseen is built around snapshots of images and verse. It works with light and shadow as it captures scenes and sounds--silence, whispers, and song. Throughout, Watson proves himself to be a reliable and keen observer of the familial. He's 'gazing out of winter windows, taking notes, ' as he always does so well. He's building art from love, happiness, difficult truths, and harsh realities. Poem by poem, Stars Unseen maintains an essential and sustaining balance. It sees 'the very sweetness of this world -- worthy of every possible risk.' ""--Michael Kleber-Diggs, author of Worldly Things""Greg Watson's poems in The Sound of Light address the weather and the seasons of life and death. Yet they are all love poems, beautiful in their quiet knowing, that weathering life and its seasons, is how we love, and that not paying attention to all the beauty and hardship around us, is our death.""- Julia Klatt Singer, author of Untranslatable Saint Paul's first Poet Laureate Carol Connolly calls Watson's work ""sympathetic poems, romantic, kind and brave poems...."""

Author Information

Greg Watson's work has appeared widely in various journals and anthologies, and has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently The Sound of Light, published by Whistling Shade Press. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, published by Nodin Press.

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