Switchgrass

Marie Kane’s fourth book of poetry, Switchgrass, is certainly about her and her husband’s physical disabilities, but it is much more. It’s about their shared journey powered by courage and hope. While carefully observing the life cycle of wild, year-round switchgrass, Kane allows us to witness this couple’s vulnerabilities, pain, and challenges. These she expertly weaves together with their love for each other and their strong marriage into something as enduring as switchgrass, whose “Deep roots subdue flood, / control washout / survive the inevitable.” Kane suffuses her book’s engaging narrative with the enchanting and vital role elements of nature, especially water, play in their lives, often proffering them a lifeline. Adding luscious color (her husband is an artist) and with a steady buoyancy, Kane elegantly claims her life story, their love story as the seasons of switchgrass unfold—and as she and her husband come to appreciate that “the season’s shortened / dusk enables more time for moonlight / and stars to share the sky.”
—Wendy Fulton Steginsky, author of Let This Be Enough