Overview

Birth and death, history and geology braid through Jana Bouma's debut poetry collection. These poems dive into the body's depths-the lungs with their ""alveoli, clustered chambers/trussed in nets of blood""-and move outward through rivers and continents to address ""the desiccated emptiness between the stars."" The poems' lyrical language interrogates the mystery of ancient stones, the elemental experiences of childbirth and motherhood, and the tenderness of grief. Within this collection, as in life, pleasure intertwines with suffering, and human experience is closely bound to the timeless cycles of the ancient planet we call home.

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Reviews

Jana Bouma's poetry is deceptive, seemingly chronicling the shared everyday, even the bucolic, lulling the reader into complacency-then flashing a mirror, disorienting, illuminating our bond to the chthonic. -Yahya Fredrickson Author of In a Homeland Not Far: New & Selected Poems and The Gold Shop of Ba-'Ali There are things we remember, things we forget and, between them, a foggy no-man's-land where Jana Bouma has settled in to recall what can be recalled. To call forth what can be called forth. In Spinning the Stone, Bouma's poetic finger is on a universal pulse, ""an unknown gift a weight a dark and yawning/ courtyard a hero's journey"" and on a particular heart's beating, ""the moment the rooting mouth finds its place..."" This double vision occurs when a mature poet sees what is happening, and also what's under what is happening. Whether you are ""a teenage girl/ without a Kotex"" or ""a man/ who doesn't remember his name"" or ""the mother of God/without a husband"" Bouma will see you, and shine a light on you making you known. And remembered. -Deborah Bogen Author of Speak Now This Charm, In Case of Sudden Free Fall, Let Me Open You a Swan and Landscape with Silos.

Author Information

Jana Bouma's poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Rattle, The McNeese Review, Natural Bridge, and San Pedro River Review. The recipient of a Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant, she earned her PhD in English Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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