The Sound of a Collective Pulse

The Sound of a Collective Pulse reflects its author's boundless heart, meditating on events such as the current pandemic. The poet explores our encounters with traumatic change, "We feel the jolt of loss," and eventual despair, "Blue now lived inside of me." Aware of the emotional burdens resulting from such loss, "This winter heart you carry," the poet offers comfort and emphasizes our essential unity. Speaking of the pandemic as "an out of body experience," she strongly touts interpersonal connectedness to stay tethered and grounded. This transformative poetry collection is ultimately an affirmation of hope and love, a promise that "We will touch palms again."

-Ami Kaye, publisher and editor, Glass Lyre Press

The poems in The Sound of a Collective Pulse are meant to bring comfort in our shared humanity, and they do. Wrapped in lush descriptions and gorgeous words, Norcross writes with us, not at us. Yes, "2020 has been an out of body experience," but "Looking above means choosing to hope." We are all birds in Cristina's cornflower blue skies, and we are learning to see the beauty that surrounds us - in everything from nature with its golden honey colors, to the "wide cerulean sea," to remembrance of ancestors. Read this book. ". . . remember how / our hands once connected in greeting. / We will touch palms again."

-Tobi Alfier, co-publisher, Blue Horse Press

Norcross's poems are "little sparks of gold," filled with touches of sun and "lemonade limbs." In her latest volume, she recounts being led down the red-brick pandemic road of uncertainty and fear, where we were herded up, masked up, isolated, and somehow dependent on each other. "The news . . . / a stream of lightning bolt events. / We feel the jolt of loss speed through the spine. . . ." Using free verse and the influences of art and nature, these poems are enabling, comforting, and richly rewarding. "The secret is simply to move / every day and remember how / our hands once connected in greeting. / We will touch palms again."

-Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-18, author of Grief Bone and A Theory of Lipstick