One Step at a Time

"Whether Alice Kavounas is walking the bounds of her home in Cornwall, speaking across time to her brother, or wryly contemplating two funerary caskets, one containing a dog's ashes, the other those of a family member, her poems are distinguished by clarity of observation, by wit, and by individual grace. We go from Cornwall to San Francisco to New York; to Minsk, London, and Palm Springs; always her voice is measured, searching. She is interested in scale; in minutiae, as in her beautiful study of a painting of a finch, or in finding herself a holidaying bystander in 1968, witnessing tanks enroute to the invasion of former Czechoslovakia. This acutely-assembled collection is rich in such telling intersections, and her narrative energy is flawless. She follows threads of thought and memory and imagination with exact insight and compassion. She reminds us that unless we give honour and attention to the past, we are lost. Her poems are rich in those qualities that we require of poems, so that we may better comprehend and celebrate our human lives." -Penelope Shuttle