Cairn

Peggy Shumaker is the daughter of two deserts—the Sonoran Desert where she grew up and the subarctic desert of interior Alaska where she lives now. She has been honored by the Rasmuson Foundation as its Distinguished Artist, served as Alaska State Writer Laureate, and received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of eight books of poetry and the lyrical memoir Just Breathe Normally. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. She serves on the boards of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, the Alaska Arts and Culture Foundation, and the Storyknife Residency Foundation. She is Editor of the Boreal Books series (an imprint of Red Hen Press), Editor of the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press, Poetry Editor for Persimmon Tree, and Contributing Editor for Alaska Quarterly Review.

"Brilliant book! Note how often Peggy Shumaker, profoundly wise and tender poet, writes "in honor" of something or someone else - has there ever been a more generous soul? These poems of many decades invoke so many rich worlds of being...her elegant spirit and voice turn us all back into the more lyrical people we might be. It is her ongoing gift, and our treasure."--Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Habibi "Early on in Cairn, Peggy Shumaker asks: Who are we without language? And I respond: Who are we without this poet’s language, a tongue that often seems to be oracle, speaking to us from a parallel world? In this treasure trove of poetry and short prose that spans decades of her writing life, Shumaker re-shapes our perception of how we move through our lives and the lives of others. As an added bonus, we’re allowed behind the scenes of her collaboration with the painter Kesler Woodard, complete with the gorgeous paintings that emerged from this conversation between two consummate artists. In all her work, Shumaker grounds us in the present moment, while also allowing us to look up and see: 'The view/vast/beyond us.'"--Brenda Miller, author of Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction "If you read only a single volume of poetry this year, may it be Peggy Shumaker’s transcendent and luminous Cairn: New & Selected Poems. Traversing more than thirty years of the poet’s life in letters, Cairn offers readers a panoply of lyric inner and outer journeys—from Arizona’s deserts to Hawaii and Costa Rica’s tropics to Alaska’s frozen expanses and beyond. Simultaneously, Shumaker charts hauntingly resonant losses, both communal and personal, wisdom rooted in her love of nature, and myriad joys arising from the bonds of friendship and love. With a clarity and sparseness rivaling Dickinson’s, the resilience and poetic mastery of Kumin, and the lucidity, honesty, and dignity of Szymborska, Shumaker proves herself to be one of this generation’s most distinctive poetic voices. Treasure this urgently beautiful and necessary book, for it expresses the complexity of our lives with virtuosic skill, intimacy, and enlightenment."--Maurya Simon, author of The Wilderness and Ghost Orchid