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Title: Necessity of Flight
Publisher: Cherry Grove Collections
PubDate: 7/2011
ISBN: 9781936370450
Binding: Paper
Price: $20
Pages: 115
Poems: 55
To Order: http://cherry-grove.com/alynn.html


About the book:
Song, flight, a glimpse of divinity: birds stitch the recurring threads of Jane Alynn's artful Necessity of Flight.

“Jane Alynn offers what we expect of our finest poets: language that glows with intelligence, images that build layered regions of emotion, and sequences that are models of human experience. What could be better than: 'The mind a mere immensity of nothing,' or 'the blunder of unearned godliness. " – James Bertolino 

“Jane Alynn's first book, Necessity of Flight is wonderfully inhabited by birds, flowers, food and family. As she says in her beautiful final poem 'Chuckanut Drive in Winter' she goes 'slowly to see things clearly.' And her poems prove it. Full of careful observation and lush description, they walk at the boundaries: between nature and the human world; between human and human. They've left me richer for having read them." – Patricia Fargnoli

“Reader, I trust these poems. Jane Alynn transforms lived experience into the natural realm of wonder. With honest insight, The Necessity of Flight allows us moments of true pleasure. In these pages, house cats become 'two purses in the window seat' and the Rugosa rose is seen as 'shaggy, with unkempt habits.'  But what I admire most in this book are the marriage poems. With an unflinching eye, the speaker watches as two trapeze artists stand in for a couple's real life struggles. 'I go slow along this road to see things clearly,' Alynn informs us. How lucky we are for this invitation to travel with her. A fine debut. " – Susan Rich

“At the heart of Jane Alynn's Necessity of Flight is a profound reverence for and kinship with the natural world. The point of view of this stunning first full-length collection is one of wonder and continual discovery. From 'the cloud- burst of starlings' to 'the bluest silence' the language is balanced and beautiful. Truly breathtaking turns of phrases abound throughout, but Alynn is an extraordinary master of the last line. Here's just one example from 'Small Gods: 'And for a little while at least, she renews my faith / in a life of radiant poverty.'Like the 'strangely woven curtain / elaborately spun of threads and dust' from the poem 'House Spider,' Alynn's Necessity of Flight is taut, enchanting, and fully glistening." – Lana Hechtman Ayers

About the author:
Jane Alynn is a poet, essayist, and fine art photographer. Originally from Portland, Oregon, she has lived many places, including New York City, Okinawa, and San Diego, before returning to her beloved Northwest, making Seattle her home. During the decades she spent as a psychotherapist, she also led “Creative Vision" workshops for photographers in Seattle, in Canada, and in the Southwest. After retiring from her therapy practice, she moved to Anacortes, Washington, and earned an MFA in creative writing from Antioch Los Angeles. These days you can find her happily committed to writing, making photographs, traveling - the kind that comes from wanderlust - and teaching workshops.

Alynn is the author of Necessity of Flight (Cherry Grove, 2011) and a chapbook, Threads & Dust (Finishing Line Press, 2005). She has been the recipient of a William Stafford Award from Washington Poets Association (2004), and her poems have appeared in numerous journals, such as Calyx, Floating Bridge Review, The Pacific Review, Quercus Review, Manorborn, Snowy Egret, StringTown, and Switched- on Gutenberg, as well as in many anthologies.

For more on this author, please visit her website at: www.janealynn.com.


From the Book:

Snowbirds
by Jane Alynn

Because winter claims more than a season from us
we decided as we watched the geese depart
to be like them, which meant
migrating as they must do every winter
along flyways to regions in the south
where they find release from the cold.

But the whole way we were lashed by storms,
split by the chill, blinded
by the smear of rain or snow
in Tucson, Silver City, Santa Fe.
Even Death Valley turned us back,
river black spilling over the flooded gutter
of land, roads closed, rain still falling.

Day after day we woke to cold damp, water pooled
in quaggy campgrounds, the few still open.
It's a record season, we read, for precipitation.
The worst weather in 140 recorded years.
We cursed the news and abandoned our journey.

How different it would have been
if our bones were light enough,
if we had sufficient stamina for trouble, wings
to lift us above the surfaces of the earth,
if we had known how to take advantage of the wind.