Talking Diamonds

by Linda Nemec Foster

Overview

"A humanist at heart, Linda Nemec Foster has demanded from her poetry an artfulness that engages ordinary life. With each new book her work has continued to mature, deepen, console, surprise, and Talking Diamonds is as wise as it is lovely."

-Stuart Dybek, author of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781960329110
Publisher:	Cornerstone Press
Publication date:	11/10/2023
Pages:	98
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.23(d)

About the Author

Linda Nemec Foster has published thirteen collections of poetry, including Bone Country (Cornerstone Press), The Blue Divide, Amber Necklace from Gdańsk, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book), which was created with co-author Anne-Marie Oomen and artist Meridith Ridl. Her work appears in magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, New American Writing, North American Review, Witness, Verse Daily, and the Best Small Fictions Anthology 2022. She has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and awards from the Arts Foundation of Michigan, National Writer's Voice, Dyer-Ives Foundation, The Poetry Center (NJ), Fish Anthology (Ireland), and the Academy of American Poets. The first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan (2003-2005), Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College.

What People are Saying About This

Sydney Lea

“In ‘Vision,’ one of many arresting poems in Talking Diamonds, Linda Nemec Foster’s protagonist sees Our Lady of Guadalupe in an unlikely Hawaiian setting. Half waking from reverie, she recognizes that the Virgin is in fact tattooed, front and back, on a native man: ‘And you tell yourself this isn’t a miracle,’ she writes, ‘only a tattoo; this isn’t anything/extraordinary, only your life . . .’ But that is precisely what makes her new collection so compelling: from what Wordsworth called the simple produce of the common day—a child’s piano recital, a family photograph, a wretched piece of motel art—Foster exacts an energy that is, precisely, visionary, even miraculous. This is an effort so widespread in contemporary poetry as itself to seem a commonplace, and one that generally fails. Not so in Talking Diamonds, which challenges, intrigues, awes, and ultimately gratifies, poem after excellent poem.”

Editorial Reviews

"The brilliance and power of Foster's language, which has been evident in earlier volumes, is even stronger in this book."

-Lisel Mueller, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet

"Foster exacts an energy that is, precisely, visionary, even miraculous. This is an effort so widespread in contemporary poetry as itself to seem a commonplace, and one that generally fails. Not so in Talking Diamonds, which challenges, intrigues, awes, and ultimately gratifies, poem after excellent poem."

-Sydney Lea, author of No Doubt the Nameless and Here

"[Foster's] works here are exceptional and gleaming, serving as a reminder that even experts can excel beyond their own greatness."

-The Grand Rapids Press

From the Publisher