Description

The Way a Woman Knows 

Poems by Carolyn Martin

Carolyn Martin, in her second collection of poetry, is not afraid to ask the difficult questions and tackles them with her intelligent wit, wrapping them individually in her quilt of compassion.

About the Author

From Roman Catholic nun and Associate Professor of English to management trainer and business writer, Carolyn Martin’s life has taken her from coast to coast, from the classroom to the conference stage, from poetry to business writing and back again. After retiring from the business world in 2008, she returned to her first love–poetry. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals. Carolyn currently lives in Clackamas, Oregon, where she gardens, writes, and plays with creative colleagues.

What They’re Saying…

I love the intimacy, feistiness, smarts, and charm of Carolyn Martin’s second collection of poetry. She is a poet deeply invested in everyday holiness, in “cobwebs sighing on a wall” and “glory pouring over earth.” In love with mysteries brought down to earth, Martin knows what contemporary oracles are for; her often visionary gaze lets us see “what’s useful to know/when nothing’s just itself.” She handles the most difficult subjects – death, gender identity, love, families, war, and belief – with great compassion and clarity.

– Kathleen Halme,
Author of My Multiverse,
Winner, 2014 Green Rose Prize

The Way a Woman Knows traverses the profane and the quotidian, as in “… slick with rabbit-splat the Kia/smeared in puddling rain …” and soars into the realm of the goddess and myth, revealed in the poem “Dancing with the Women in the Moon.” With a fresh eye, Carolyn Martin re-envisions old tales like Antigone and Ismene, David and Goliath. And in her masterful, heart-wrenching persona poem “What’s Left to Burn,” this former nun dares to tell the truth about family and loss.

– Willa Schneberg,
Author of Rending the Garment,
Recipient, 2002 Oregon Book Award in Poetry

Throughout Carolyn Martin’s vibrant new poetry collection, The Way a Woman Knows, we hear a rare voice, a voice of honesty and clarity. Not afraid to ask questions of love, history, memory, or God, Martin’s poems search out the difficult, vital answers. “But what’s true?” one poem inquires, as another asks the world, “What happened after that? … / And then what happened after that?” This is a book that gracefully opens its hands to the answers, both painful and humorous alike. Whether “releasing secrets / into dusk like enlightened fireflies” or asking directly to be surprised by God, Martin’s powerful poems tell us that we can live like this – in poetry, in love, in truth.

– Annie Lighthart,
Author of Iron String, Airlie Press, 2013