The Force of Gratitude

Finalist for the Charlotte Mew Prize Janice Gould carries us through the challenges and triumphs of her life with such carefully observed detail, such immediacy. At the end of one poem she writes about a woman she met when she was twenty-one, asking, Hadn't she gazed steadily into my eyes? And this is exactly what these poems do. By gazing steadily into one poet's experience, they show us the world.

--Ellen Bass, Judge of the Charlotte Mew Prize Luminous with the tradition of Deep Song, or Cante Jondo, The Force of Gratitude is a journey through song and story of the love, longing, sorrow and beauty that shape a life. With a brave and intimate voice, each poem invites us into its "vibrant residence," into the rapturous landscapes of the heart.

--Jennifer Elise Foerster, author of Leaving Tulsa Tracing the West coast from Berkeley to Portland to Vancouver, these poems and prose poems track a migratory youth. Pushed north, the speaker wanders, working as she goes: "I was the girl who bucked hay, split wood, tore the ragged face of earth with the harrow's teeth." But even as the young speaker moves from place to place, often in pursuit of elusive lovers, a profound sense of belonging also pervades these poems. Gould is at home in her own desire, at home in a natural world that is textured, sensory, endlessly arresting. When she describes the place where "mice skittered in milkweed, moles burrowed under stinging nettle," we live there too, and fall a little more in love with this world, this speaker, this poet.

--Jane Hilberry, author of Still the Animals Enter and Body Painting (Colorado Book Award for Poetry) Vibrant love, passing cross country, is the salve of these poems. They are night sky constant, even in their journey into song. The journey is a transformation that trails light behind each wind, cloud, love, and vision from memory. Music is brought to language, language to music, but they remain together as one.

--Linda Hogan, award-winning Chickasaw author