Once it stops snowing
I breathe the color of nothing;
a porous sponge mops the spilled skymilk.In drifts of small
and shrouds of soft,
doubting the existence of guardrails,I intuit my way home
to a farmhouse, white embossed on white,
that hangs by a thread of wood smoke.
Available to purchase at:
Amazon, Deerbrook, SPD Books, Norwich Bookstore
Publisher: Deerbrook Editions
Published: 2015
Reviews:
“Once It Stops is a heady mix of the erudite and the quotidian. It is a mixture of the precisely observed natural world and the deeply philosophical questioning of how that world exists and is perceived that animates the writing….What Florence Fogelin is doing is vital: playful, psychologically insightful, and startlingly precise. Fogelin is the real deal; she delights in the worlds we’re given, and the words that let us sing of them.”
– David Allen Sullivan, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, and Black Ice. Poet laureate Santa Cruz, CA.
“Fogelin’s poems amaze with range; her voracious intelligence encompasses stinging societal critiques …. and beauty ….. the philosophical and cosmic, high and low. … Compassion and fearless self-implication balance her dark wit: “I lifted up the scab and peeked/to see the future.“
– April Ossmann, independent editor and author of Anxious Music (Four Way Books)
“Rarely is a debut collection described as “fearless,” “the real deal,” showing “voracious intelligence”— especially when the poet has reached 80 years. Florence Fogelin’s lyric poetry, informed by a “nomad’s telescope,” focuses on desire and mortality, marriage and place. Like “stone masons chipping at perplexity,” she crafts a journey — from Vermont to Sicily, from tearing down a boathouse to talking with Sappho on a NYC subway—finding “the eternal hope seen in every graveyard” while “doubting the existence of guardrails.”
– SPD books
“Wise, worldly, and deft at connecting unlikely yet fascinating topics — perhaps as a reminder that poetry has no problem with String Theory — Florence Fogelin is a graduate of Duke, with a master’s from Yale. Her poems have appeared in numerous prestigious journals over many years, including Poet Lore, the Cumberland Poetry Review, and The Lyric.“
– Foreword Reviews