Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Barbara Drake is one of a kind, an original. She writes about the plainest, the most ordinary things — in poems made with such a light touch they almost float off the page. They are delightful, in the highest sense of that word. Fetching. Sheep, wildflowers, granddaughters, and border collies inhabit them, and a “kestrel on the telephone wire /...enjoying her morning mouse, / whose limp tail dangles like an untied shoestring.” Effervescent poems. Deft. Luminous. Down-home." Clemens Starck, author of Cathedrals & Parking Lots: Collected Poems
Review
"I love Barbara Drake’s warmhearted and intimate and modest voice in these poems. I love, especially, the way she evokes the nostalgic past without sentimentality but with great good humor and wonder; and how she looks at the natural world, even the tiniest blooms underfoot, with such close attention and curiosity and appreciation. In these poems it’s as if we are sitting across the kitchen table from a dear friend, a friend who is funny and kind, who can always find the magic in the commonplace." Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses
About the Author
Barbara Drake’s books and chapbooks of poetry include Driving One Hundred (published in 2009 by Windfall Press), Love at the Egyptian Theatre, What We Say to Strangers, Life in a Gothic Novel, Bees in Wet Weather, and Small Favors. She is also the author of a memoir, Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, from Oregon State University Press, and Writing Poetry, a widely used college textbook, in print since 1983. Her writing appears in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Peace at Heart was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999.