Tumblehome - by Susan Jaret McKinstry

Book Synopsis

Tumblehome is structured like a musical fugue, moving in three sections from the west coast of Ireland to London, then to Galway, and back to a small town in Minnesota as it interweaves and deepens themes of home, time and loss. The poems contemplate vast human history and the small space of our lives in distinct voices and episodes, with closely-observed objects-coins, stones, birds, water-reappearing and echoing to create a harmonic poetic travelogue.

Review Quotes

In this quietly dazzling collection, you'll find Susan Jaret McKinstry working like an avid magpie-each poem a nest-altar for the gathering of idiosyncratic treasures. Here we are in "the restless necessary," each given a place to shelter, a hallowed hive where even "unbelieving us" might find a way to praise the wonders that glint and sing at every reach.

-Chris Martin, author of May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our

Neurodivergent Future, and poetry collections The Falling Down Dance, Becoming Weather,

and American Music

These well-built poems full of wisdom and wonder transport us to landscapes as varied as the west coast of Ireland, where the cliffs are "like time made physical," and the poet's Minnesota backyard, where she reacquaints us with "the unfamiliar everyday." In these poetic travelogues from far and near, Susan Jaret McKinstry contemplates the small place of our individual lives in the span of history, and the large place loss occupies in the span of our lives.

-Rob Hardy, author of Shelter in Place, Domestication, and The Collection Jar

From the strange immortality found in the megaliths and dolmens of Ireland, to the even stranger mortality found in daily life in small town Minnesota, Susan Jaret McKinstry's poetry assures the reader, "Wherever you are, / may these set-down words / held in place in a white space / carry you, heart-hopeful / and heart-worn you, home." Each of the pitch-perfect poems that make up Tumblehome is an invitation to "Keep your heart open. / Remember surprise."

-Greg Hewett, author of To Collect the Flesh, Red Suburb, The Eros Conspiracy, darkacre,

and Blindsight