In Search of Warm Breathing Things, by Katherine Gekker

Price includes shipping costs to the continental United States. Autograph and inscription available. Simply write this in the notes section, and let us know the name of the person for whom you'd like the book inscribed. Praise for In Search of Warm Breathing Things: “Is anything common?” Katherine Gekker asks in her debut collection, In Search of Warm Breathing Things. The answer, in these richly detailed poems, is no. Gekker is a keen observer, able to “unlock the beauty hidden” in the ordinary. An iridescent grackle becomes a symbol of hope, “collarbones shimmer like wings.” Weaving images of the natural world with glimpses of a struggling marriage, Gekker portrays life in all its emotional complexity. “Two bees are fighting or courting — I can’t tell which,” she writes in “To Cast a Shadow Again.” Yet there are moments of joy, the promise of transformation. “My shift billows, diaphanous…. I can seduce anyone tonight beneath fronds slicing like blades.” — Ellen Bass In these pages, Katherine Gekker tackles the emotional truths with "passion, a rutting need to run" line by line, poem by poem. With formal dexterity, an eye for language, and a rueful shake of the head at the human capacity for hope in the face of heartache, the poems of In Search of Warm Breathing Things mark a promising debut. — Gerry LaFemina, author of The Story of Ash Katherine Gekker has such a deft and musical touch with language that the most profound and aching moments in this book may catch you by surprise. Then you realize you are in the hands of a master of balance. No matter how dark the material here, the author’s wise and lyrical voice is a kind of assurance, a precious reminder that the beauty all around us is worth celebrating, even as it falls away. — Rose Solari, author of The Last Girl and A Secret Woman