Poetry
Poetry and painting come from the same place for me: paying attention. These three collections are rooted in the Appalachian mountains and in the wild, strange, beautiful world that surrounds us—animals, trees, weather, memory, grief, love, and the mysteries we can’t quite name. They are poems of place and connection, written from a life spent looking and listening closely. (Fourth collection coming soon…)
Appalachian Ground
These poems grow out of a life lived attentively in the Appalachian mountains—among salamanders and crows, rivers and wildflowers, bones and bees. They explore what happens when we allow ourselves to be changed by the places we inhabit. At heart, Appalachian Ground is a love story: about the mountains, the living world, and learning how to belong.
Wolf Laundry
Love poems for friends, family, wild places, and the shining moments we collect like pennies on the windowsill. Here there are tricks and legends, psalms for bees, and ghosts whose hands are filled with strange gifts. There are clean stone hearths with fires ablaze, holy pools, and the deep weight of grief.”You already know everything will not turn out well,” she writes. “Make gardens anyway.”
Reflection with Crow
Enigmatic, philosophical, and periodically caustic, Crow haunts the mountain and is sometimes moved to deliver commentary or wisdom on human (and non-human) exploits. In these thirteen poems the author and her totem discuss newly-discovered dwarf galaxies, Japanese paper-folding, time travel, the author’s progressive neurological disorder, and growing up.
What People are Saying
I admit it. I’m not quite finished. I don’t want to be. I am doling out these morsels of poetry to myself with the same consideration that Lisa scatters offerings on her mountain for the critters and spaces she loves so. Why not? I deserve the early morning revelations they provoke. I expect when I revisit them again, I’ll find different worlds within myself experiencing them in a new way. Isn’t that the way all good writing is? Lisa’s words are succinct and sublime, both at once.
I started reading and am one step short of levitating in wonder and joy. The poet and I have been friends for decades. Because of that (or even so), reading her work I feel as though a shooting star befriended me all those years ago and it/she and I have been falling falling falling — oxygen: yes; gravity: no — together forever.
Full of heartfelt emotion about living on Appalachian soil. Highly recommended for anyone wishing to connect with themselves or others through nature. “Emotional Clearing” will stay with me forever.
Her words conjure up long forgotten memories of being a child in the mountain region. This book is a tribute to all things Appalachian. Don’t miss taking this mountain adventure with the Author. She takes you along with her and the animals through the woods on simple adventures that turn into much, much more. Very enjoyable and heartwarming.
“To give our full attention is to be broken into wholeness.”
Shades of Mary Oliver, Rumi, Emerson, Hemingway and Rilke echo through the sacred hills and valleys of Bledsoe’s writing.
Some lines hit with the punch of a bare-knuckled boxer, others dance softly like a mountain stream in autumn.
Lisa writes from a depth of hard-carved experience, sketching open the very corners of human existence with her words.
This book is so vital about living: nature, loving, relationships, worrying, coping and things that any living organism can relate to. Reading it took me out of myself while recognizing myself in its profound revelations.
This book is a tribute to all things Appalachian. Don’t miss taking this mountain adventure with the author. She takes you along with her and the animals through the woods on simple adventures that turn into much, much more. Very enjoyable and heartwarming.
Author Lisa Creech Bledsoe brings together the natural world of the Appalachian mountains, autobiography and life lessons in a book rich in imagery and wisdom. From meditations to help empty your mind to simple appreciation of the color brown, from lessons learned as a beekeeper and theologian, Bledsoe’s words are a gift in an age where we don’t stop to look at wildflowers near enough, where beauty has faded to gray in stress-filled times. I am looking forward to her next volume. In the meantime, I will read a poem each night as a lullaby and meditation.
This book is unique in that it is not a pretense of greatness. It is a clear demonstration of how nature can offer us advice. As a person a naturalist who has spent a lifetime in National parks, I realize that to really experience a park takes effort. Everyone should write poetry, and no one should worry about it being great or publishable. These poems are meditations, and they can serve as a model for others on how to meditate.
These are lovely, transcendent poems—luminous and contemplative as the natural world you document. Thank you for sharing them.
I’ve been following Lisa Creech Bledsoe’s writing on social media for some time now, happily anticipating when I would be able to hold a collection of her poetry in my hands. I deeply appreciate Lisa’s unique perspective from her home in the Appalachian Mountains, and find that her experience translates effortlessly across hemispheres and seasons to my own life here in New Zealand.
I love Lisa’s poetry. You will settle into her words and stories much the way you imagine she settles into the song of her woods and the lyrics of her bees. There is room in the writing to find your own shared experience, to taste the weather on the mountain, to see imagery that is both clean and deep, like the cool creeks and offering pools she is regularly gifting with attention. Some poems will want you to revisit them, their secrets unyielding until you are ready to hear. Some will welcome you in and share a cup and a cookie with you. Her first collection was great and I gifted it to many, I’ll be doing the same with this one. You deserve this. Get it.