Deborah Cummins

Until They Catch Fire Deborah Cummins

Poetry. A memory, Deborah Cummins tells us, is a mind-painting, and she paints her memories with the precision and beauty of the Old Masters. UNTIL THEY CATCH FIRE is a gallery of stunning mind-paintings, many of them about the heart-rending loss of her brother and mother. Their absence is a palpable presence in these poems, but ultimately the book is, as the title of one poem puts it, 'A Griever's Reference Manual, ' and it can help us fellow grievers face down the darkness and begin to rise again, like green shoots of grass after a fire, into the beautiful 'cathedral of light' that is this world. These are essential poems. Do not miss them.-David Jauss