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Blue Patina by Nancy Takacs Pages 103/54 poems Price: $15.00 (Washington State residents include 8.2% State sales tax) ISBN-13: 978-0-911287-73-8 Publisher: Blue Begonia Press To order: Blue Begonia Press, Inc. 311 Hillcrest Dr Selah, WA 98942 (509) 698-4456 Advance Praise: Compared with the gorgeous, sensual worlds inhabited by Takacs' speakers, the disorient- ing loveliness of Utah's landscape seems almost as plain as the word "desert" to easterners' ears. Through these formally varied, affectionate, and attentive lyrics, however, Blue Patina gently charts the overlapping territories of self, memory, and appetite its wise, flawed, intensely alert speakers inhabit every day, wherever they physically live in the present. Takacs' work doesn't idealize, but writes with "farmhouse aura inside skyscraper." This imaginative attitude encourages readers to recognize both "the flourishing" and "the deadweight" of daily life and the vitality of a busy, private mind: the everyday drama of the wicked neighborhood cat, the irresistible erotics of flannel, and the unexpected deviance of lavender, garlic, and lime. Takacs' poems show us what it is to be in love with places, with any place, but also to have the courage and wits to keep moving. ‐Elizabeth Savage Blue Patina. Nancy Takacs is in the shade of high desert canyon walls. She's quiet, steady, clear. She's resting her hand on her hip, running her eyes over rock darkened by sun and. dew and time. She's looking for and finding those telling scratches in the indigo, the petroglyphs, the earlier times and beyond. Her own times, all there in the present. Record- ed. The Jersey girl, her family, her friends, the neighborhood, the school and the church, the boys, the streets. The way out. All the way to this Utah map. The people, their meeting places, their times alone. The high desert. The life away, the waters of Superior, the forest, its creatures, the flowers and plants, the garden inside the fence line between the bear and the cabin door. Recorded. Clear scratches in the blue patina of the high desert. The desert varnish. Still, persisting. Hard earned, hard edged, carefully etched. She's forward looking. There's more up canyon. ‐Barry Grimes Besides being one of the best kept secrets in Rocky Mountain literature, Nancy Takacs is genuinely one of the most generous and very most talented poets I have ever read. When she finds her way into an image, a drift of figurative language, or a crackling story, she bulldoggedly gets her teeth into it, never lets go until it thunders, and shakes it until it gives up all its secrets, calls out calf rope, and says I give. She's just flat that good. And yes, as a matter of fact, yes, I would take this book with me to the deserted island for my end of life hermitage. For more information on that topic as well as my opinion on whether you should read this book, please consult the closing sentence of James Joyce's ULYSSES. Yes. ‐David Lee About the Author: Nancy Takacs is the author of three chapbooks, Pale Blue Wings, Juniper, and Wild Animals, and a full-length book, Preserves. She is a former creative writing professor and wilderness studies instructor at the College of Eastern Utah in Price, and has, for the past decade, worked with inmates, seniors, and children, for the Utah Arts Council's Artists in Education program. A recipient of the 2013 Sherwin W. Howard Poetry Award from Weber: a Journal of the Contem- porary West, the WFOP Kay Saunders New Poet Prize, several writing awards from the Utah Arts Council,and the Nation/Discovery Award, she holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. Originally from Bayonne, New Jersey, she lives in Wellington, Utah, and in Bayfield, Wisconsin, near Lake Superior, with her husband and two dogs. From the Book: Yoga Class by Nancy Takacs I fear parking lots, malls, and the sprawl of furniture stores in Duluth. I fear lonely roads, rest stops. A family sits down now to a supper of tangy lettuce and organic beans. Beth tells us to be good to our feet. She asks us to tug on each toe, make a fist to knead our arches. I think how once I caught Delicate Arch throwing its arm around the Rabbit Moon. I like it when the moments fall gently into one another, end up on some island with no human footprints and many bear. I want to know the tall grasses swaying with punk-like tops that sprout small silver crowns and the short grasses like waterfalls that erupt into feathers. I'm back at the lemonade stand where a boy showed me his clay figurines of a fruit bat and a sloth. Today I feared the quilt ‐ the black one inlaid made by a great-great grandmother, with her postage stamps of red taffeta and cotton garlands ‐ will flutter into nothing. I watched my cat stalk the lizard, fed my dog her favorite: lima beans. Alice Miller says over and over how shame kills. I fear how the spirit might never revive when cruel words as well as hands crease it with discipline. I don't fear the long portage or the sticky mouths of ticks, but how the earth is losing itself, the spin of it beyond those who are chopping wood, putting up clothes lines, riding their bicycles uphill to town. Beth says we're done with our shoulders and our arms. Now we must try to do hand stands, head stands so the blood will come to our hearts. Previously published: Sugar House Review
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