Alice Wolf Gilborn's luminous new collection of poetry, Apples & Stones, astonishes with the sincerity and depth of its vision. Gilborn gives us a deft mix of lyric and narrative pieces, weaving an intimate tapestry of daily rural life. The poems, which range from her adopted Vermont to formative years spent in the West, resound with such joy and poignancy, you'll want to keep picking up this volume again and again.James Crews, author of Bluebird, Telling my Father
The trajectory of Alice Wolf Gilborn's Apples & Stones resonates with Thoreau's Walden, leading readers through a year of seasons, beginning and ending with spring. As Thoreau focused on his pond, Gilborn focuses on the woods and streams, the weather and fauna, mostly of Vermont. In taut poetic lines and startling, memorable imagery, she pays close attention to insects and animals (especially her beloved dogs), for they, as well as friends and family members, prove to be her best instructors. Gilborn's poems use language with both rigor and delicacy, preparing us not only to embrace violence, decay, and death wherever we may confront them but also to be ready to experience wonder-in nature, in our individual lives, in society at large. Above all, Gilborn's poetry encourages us to look around us both more carefully and more caringly.
Elizabeth Schultz, author of The Sauntering Eye, Water-Gazers
Apples & Stones is a great achievement in contemporary American poetry, exhibiting Gilborn's mastery of lyrical, realistic, and always engaging verse that's centered on the natural world, as well as everyone's place within it. Gilborn's poetry brings into vibrant focus the absolute value of everyday life and where it takes shape for us. Her subjects range from Colorado prairies to the Adirondack Mountains to neighborhoods and homes in Vermont. In each of these settings, nature expresses itself with vital force as Gilborn recalls her childhood or reflects on family, motherhood, and mortality. In Apples & Stones, she has contributed significantly, once again, to nature writing as a genre and to American letters, capturing the power of her experiences with "So much life."
Donald J. McNutt, Editor, Blueline Magazine
