Finalist from The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021

Tell Her Yes

by Ann Farley

Scheduled Release Date: Apr 15, 2022

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A drop of rain slips from leaf to ground, perhaps to river and beyond. Like rain’s journey, our lives twist and turn, hit dry stretches and unexpected turbulence, land on moments of beauty. Nurture and nature, with its solace and challenges, weaves through the poems in Tell Her Yes. Themes of love and parenthood, friendship, aging, dementia, and death wind through this collection like a river, while a heron keeps watch, and a crocodile lurks in the murk.

 

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“In Tell Her Yes, Ann Farley offers us lyric poems that speak the language of forgiveness, of patience, of humility and reverence. A number of these poems are about the natural world. A number are about her work giving palliative care. Given their compelling tone, all these poems are—in themselves—advocates for what’s palliative. Calling us toward our better selves, this collection asks us to see ourselves as capable of sustained generosity and kindness. Farley’s poems remind us that, like a beneficent river, “At our best we are an expanse of blue, / a shallow of nurture,” a haven for all whose lives touch ours.”

—Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita