Pulse and Weave

Liz Nakazawa's Pulse and Weave brings us poems emanating from both quotidian reality and from a dreamscape full of "mirages without evaporation." A born naturalist, Nakazawa folds mallard, ironwood, yarrow, coulee, wetland and moonflower into her lines, creating an "origami dream" of flora and fauna. In one of this book's celebratory poems ("Sojourn to the Countryside"), we encounter those seeds "wanting to believe in a better world / seeds for short enduring joys, and long encouraged prayers." Such seeds carry the kind of intent evident throughout Nakazawa's work.

-Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita