Handwritten - by Kenadie Lee (Paperback)

About the Book

The poems in Handwritten detail the experience of living a life guided by gratitude, wonder, and love.

Book Synopsis

The poems in Handwritten detail the experience of living a life guided by gratitude, wonder, and love.

Framed through the changing seasons, Handwritten explores how human connection, vulnerability, and time spent with nature lead to a life well lived. The poems emphasize the importance of intentionality, gratitude, wonder, and love.

Review Quotes

Lee celebrates nature, love, family, and memory in this brief but potent poetry collection.

This body of poems is organized by seasons; the autumn section opens with "(Long Story Short)," a dialogue between a woman and the moon in which the former wonders if the latter ever gets lonely and questions how to "make a home out of herself." In "A Moment," a polite stranger interrupts the speaker's study session in a college student union building with his breathtaking piano playing. Macaroni and cheese reminds the poet of her younger siblings, and subsequently her parents, leading to a revelation about family in "I Think I've Found a Definition." Love and all its complications are the focus of the winter section. The speaker contemplates a sign that, in hindsight, indicated disinterest from their partner in "1111." In the sensual "Candlewick," the speaker pleads, "Tell me how it feels- / that strong flame, / warm on your bare skin." Baking cinnamon rolls is a form of romance in "The Secret Ingredient." Spring finds the speaker aching with empathy for a loved one who "can't even tell me / where it hurts anymore." The summer section brims with appreciation for the gift of life and those who taught the poet "what it means to be alive." Lee's lovely poems read like tender conversations between the poet, nature, loved ones, and life itself. ("Lively wind, make me / sweet like you. Make me / strong like you until cherry blossoms / confetti off my fingertips.") Descriptions of others are raw and emotional, like a tormented loved one "clawing the fertile earth, carving deep gashes / where your daisies should be." While the tone teeters toward the melodramatic in lines like, "My warm arms wrap around my beating heart, / and finally, I see my life is art," profound statements about the human experience abound in passages such as, "Isn't it / in our nature to give everything we have- / to trust?"

An authentic, awe-struck collection of verse.

- Kirkus Reviews