Sky Furniture - Paperback

by Ina Anderson (Author)

"What sort of thing is a life? This thing sourced at the whim of two other lives soon gone..." What is a life and who does it answer to? Ina Anderson's poems embrace connection with myriad other lives: a homeless veteran, a migrant, a weaver in a carpet factory in India. She conjures an imagined, yet-unborn great-granddaughter in an unimaginable future world. All are part of one human family, bound in mutual responsibility to "this thing," this life. Sky Furniture carries us through a life resonant with care, close awareness, and ample joy. Deftly rendered scenes frame deep human concern, and profound love for what is. This book is a testament of hope.

-Cynthia Huntington, Finalist, National Book Award in Poetry, Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College

There is joy in reading Ina Anderson's poems in Sky Furniture. Some are sad, as befits the human condition and our times, while others poke and challenge us. But more often her poems reveal the magic of everyday, powerfully remembered and gracefully rendered. Anderson can be a loved child and a lost tribe, the past and the future, buffeted by environmental disaster and sustained by beloved surroundings and the people in her life. Her talent is to bring us along with her.

-Gus Speth, author of Let Your Tears Water the Earth, former Dean, Yale School of the Environment

Sky Furniture, Ina Anderson's new collection, offers childhood memory and magic along with stark observations of our broken world. As a world traveler, she portrays the beauty and tension within diverse traditions. She draws the reader through her rooted life in England's Lake District where lambs and their shepherd families were born knowing their place on the fells. Change disrupts this harmony. "On the side of the road you will notice / a dead jacket, leaking polyester. / You will mistake it for a sheep." At the same time, she is able to spin the fleece of each poem "into the finest yarn, color it with lichens into purple, and bring the utmost pleasure" to any reader.

-Verandah Porche, poet and writing partner, Sudden Eden, The Body's Symmetry, Glancing Off