Kathryn DeZur

Blue Ghosts Kathryn DeZur

Blue Ghosts contains poems about what haunts us, what fascinates us, what we cannot leave behind because of what we carry within: experiences, memories, emotions, and desires. The collection catalogs defining moments, those that shift everything that comes after, and the feelings accompanying them: fear, grief, envy, resentment, hope, and intense love. The poems explore how we find and make meaning out of loss, how we transform ourselves and our lives. They seek understanding and comfort--sometimes found, sometimes not--in the natural world. Through them we traverse many landscapes, both literal and metaphorical, including a small rural town, the Catskill Mountains, the desert, the hospital, the monastery, and the garden; we engage with all manner of wild life, such as crows and foxes, dandelions and phlox, bottle flies and blue ghost fireflies. The poetry resonates with an appreciation of the difficulties and the miracles of the everyday, of the ordinary, and reminds us of how we fit, how we belong, even when it feels that we do not. Each poem becomes a dewdrop containing "clouds / in reflected heavens" that medieval legend tells us ravens consumed upon being born, "drop / by / drop."