Forking the Swift — Jennifer Sperry Steinorth

Among the many striking rewards of Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s Forking the Swift is being led into the startling realization that everything is a wilderness. She leaves us alone and lost with no guide except the poem. When we stumble out from her work, we wonder how we survived and we learn that survival means changing into something new. Notice how she makes form evoke and embody what the language explores. This is artistry that matters and means. These poems put the lie to one ever again saying, “Seen that. Done that.” Steinorth brings us back to the enigmatic wonder of it ALL.  
— Jack Ridl, author of Broken Symmetry and Losing Season
 
In a world where language may be as homogenized as milk or as pretentious as Jello colors, Jen Sperry Steinorth’s poems offer the essential-ness that a long look at a clear night sky will give you. She is as attentive to sound as a jazz trumpeter is, “Those Triassic Calamites out a coal mine in Tasmania…,” letting the mutes and sibilants move in and out of a poem like fireflies, but she’s also as grounded and authentic as a good drummer: climbing oil rigs, going for smokes, and yes, what about that black dress? Her poems range wide in refreshing content and format, strung with phone calls from the electrician and wrestling bears. They are permeated with quiet wit about human and wild nature—think of “Thirteen Ways to Kill Starlings.” Without sentiment or cliché, Jen brings us what we love in poetry, the song of shaped sounds rivering through shaped meaning—“suck the marrow/the morrow.” Michigan Writers is proud to introduce this dynamic work not just to lovers of poetry, but to all of us who long for a clear eye to show us the what shines in the dark.  
— Anne-Marie Oomen, author of the poetry collection, Un-Coded Woman, An American Map: Essays, and other books


Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s lives in northern, lower Michigan where she is a builder and designer of small, green homes.  Her poems have appeared or are forth coming in Pleiades, Tar River, The Southeast Review Online, A River and Sound Review, Cheek Teeth Blog, Scintilla, Dunes Review and elsewhere.  She is a frequent contributor to Foreword Reviews.


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