Little Nest

“In Little Nest Diana Lueptow shows a unique skill for bridging the everyday and the mythic. In lines and sentences that blend formal elegance with earthy, idiomatic force, Lueptow weaves surprising and moving connections between ourselves and our histories, just as she reconciles our vulnerability with our fundamental need for what Stevens once called ‘ideas of order.’ But don’t be fooled by this poet’s meticulous technical care: ‘Nimble isn’t the half of it. Fierce is… .’ begins ‘Mink and Rabbit,’ and that declaration makes a fitting emblem for Lueptow’s own well-wrought yet ferocious collection.” —Peter Campion. “A thread runs through this wonderful gathering of poems, a thread connecting mythology and ancient places to the sometimes duller here and now. Upon that thread a timeless song is played, a song of longing and loss, and yet a song capable of transforming grief. These poems float in the waters of a dream-state where the currents of memory and imagination collide, surely the dreamy realm where lyric poetry begins and rises.” —Maurice Manning