If you have never felt like a book was your new best friend then you, dear reader, are missing out. Maybe you just haven’t encountered Amy Lemmon’s poetry yet, and the remedy is to get a copy of her third collection, The Miracles, as soon as possible.

In this book, Lemmon topples barriers between the speaker of the poem and the reader, writing honestly about desire and mortality and the ordinary things that help us go on. It’s rare to encounter such candor paired with an intense music that pervades every line, and Lemmon’s use of form turns up the volume in poems such as “Supermooning,” with lines like, “We craned to see the unctuous supermoon // In separate states, in separate cloudstruck scenes.”

The cover of The Miracles is nothing short of remarkable in itself. I love how the image calls to mind a stained glass window and acknowledges that the most fascinating part of a work of art may actually be its far edges and illuminated recesses, the stars that glow back at us as we gaze up in wonder.

–Mary Biddinger

The Miracles
Amy Lemmon
C&R Press | May 2019
Price: $16.00 | 82 pages
ISBN 978-1-949540-00-0