Turn Left at Normal

"From farmstead to oceanside, from desert to forest, from tragic loss of a mother, the bedside of a cherished friend, to delight in a grandchild's learning to swim, these poems of Laura Rodley's take us on sensual journeys of the heart. Poems rhyme, repeat in fixed form, fly wildly free; they swim to lake bottoms, escaping; they crash into sea drenched rocks. They cross America to celebrate a grown child; they care for horses, dogs; befriend owls, herons, box turtles; they suffer and mourn illness and death. What they never do is keep silent, never turn away from what is hard. They sing of a life lived in the depths and shadows, through body and spirit, and in the sea-filtered light of the sun." Patricia Lee Lewis, High Lonesome and A Kind of Yellow ______________________________________________________ "Laura Rodley is a poet who holds our world in her heart while continually opening to that world. With skilled, graceful yet sometimes matter of fact imagery and anecdote, she offers a gift for emotional depth which shimmers beneath the pliable skin of poetry itself. From childhood's seaside memories, to the working sea, to one of the very best poems ever about Japan's recent and tragic tsunami, the reader joins Rodley as she shifts her poems into the demands of adulthood with its stewardship of family, animals, landscape and love itself. Here are poems of ease, observation and homage. And poems like 'Drying Grass'-one of my favorites-which are harsh and unsolvable. Turn Left at Normal is a book of much joy and unwavering observation, a book which will make you happy to read." Pamela Stewart, The Red Window, Ghost Farm, and Just Visiting ______________________________________________________ "Laura Rodley's poetry is stunning. She swallows life whole and digests it into beautiful powerful poems. Poems about family, work, nature, children, lovers. Poems about beauty. Read her work carefully, listen closely, for it contains the very essence of life." Jean Varda, She Was Attached to Symmetry _______________________________________________________ "Laura Rodley's words spin tapestries of insightful moments, musical as they flow like breathing clear, cool air; weaving up vignettes of 'treasure'-lyrical, beautiful images as with 'touching the earth' in 'Given'-such breadth of subject and depth of feeling. Laura Rodley lovingly gives us full measure." Joan Hopkins Coughlin, artist, historian, and proprietor of Golden Cod Gallery in Wellfleet MA.