Karen Poppy

EVERY POSSIBLE THING

Karen Poppy’s upcoming chapbook, EVERY POSSIBLE THING, invites the reader to choose tenderness, choose nature, and overall- to choose life. The poems, lines, and stanzas are short and sweet, allowing the reader to savor each image in their mouth before moving onto the next. It is not a chapbook to be read quickly, but rather one that increases in depth the more deliberately you ponder its words. The images are deliciously juxtaposed, jumping from “Flapped and whiplashed onto shore, /Then tenderly pulled back.” The reader doesn’t know what to expect next, except to know that it will steal your breath. Every Possible Thing examines the lines that we all walk between nature and self, death and life, love and pain. At times, Poppy is delicate with her words, describing love as “Cashmere/ Combed and honey-kissed” and in other instances her words rip the reader from their world into hers, like when she begins “Standing in the Kitchen” with “Sometimes I suck the ghost of you/ From a plum at the sink.” I can taste the cold plum, feel the ghost dripping down my chin. 

As Poppy writes, “Revelations/ Come when we’re most open.” EVERY POSSIBLE THING is a revelation of all things that make us human- and those things we are most afraid to examine. It releases on October 25th from Homestead Lighthouse Press, and I encourage you to pick up a copy.

If you are interested in reading more about Karen Poppy, check out her website here: karenpoppy.com/publications

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