Today's poem is "Portrait of God as Aggregate of Manatees"
from The Most Kissed Woman in the World
Patricia Caspers
is an award-winning writer and the founder/publisher of West Trestle Review. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections: The Most Kissed Woman in the World (Kelsay Books, 2024), Some Flawed Magic (Kelsay Books, 2021), and In the Belly of the Albatross (Glass Lyre Press, 2015). Her work has appeared widely in journals such as Ploughshares, Valparaiso, and Sugar House Review. She is a Unitarian Universalist.
Other poems on the web by Patricia Caspers:
"Portrait of God as a Glittering of Hummingbirds"
Two poems
"Dear Deer in the Compost Pile"
"View From the Window, July"
"Portrait of God as a Girl Ginkgo"
"The Narcissus Bulb/"
"One Saturday in September"
Patricia Caspers's Website.
About The Most Kissed Woman in the World:
"There is so much beauty in Patricia Caspers' The Most Kissed Woman in the World, and a lot of darkness, too. In each 'Portrait of God' Caspers finds the sacred somewhere unexpected: a pungent ginkgo tree; an assisted living facility; a dysfunctional family; the self in all its gorgeous imperfections. These lyrical, surprising poems look at the world with hard-won clarity and tenderness, embracing joy without turning away from suffering. 'God is the kitchen knife that misses,' Caspers writes, as well as 'the crash of abundance.' Exactly. The Most Kissed Woman is sharp and generous and wise, reminding us where we hurt and also, in its revelatory unfoldings, why we go on."
"BPatricia Caspers brought me to my poetic knees with each portrait of God in her latest collection, The Most Kissed Woman in the World. Here, God is a twelve-year-old girl, is the Sierra Nevada Watershed, is a dysfunctional family, is a girl gingko, who tells us, 'Before words, there was a cool river. . .' The poemsall portraitsluxuriate in their language. God is a 'dandelion woman' who doesn't care if her pink bathrobe has loose buttons or God is deer on top of a compost pile, whose antlers are 'dusty cattails.' The poems are deeply grounded in a world recognizable by its traumas and its emotional stakes, where there are 'holes in the wall the size of God's fist.' This collection creates sanctity and sanctuary, finding God in 'The Space in My Mouth Where My Front Teeth Once Lived,' where one looks 'to find out what I believe.' Caspers' masterful poetry, her use of forms from sonnet to golden shovel, her insistence on wonder and faith, present the question, 'what do four chambers have to do with all the vows we made?' This book, with all of its 'beautiful cacophonies,' was a joyful experience, where as I read, I felt as if I had, 'Come home.'"
Chloe Martinez
Jennifer Martelli
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