Lisa Creech Bledsoe

Wolf Laundry Lisa Creech Bledsoe

Whether she's tying blessing sticks in a yellow birch, or wondering what her neighbor plans to do with the red velvet couch sitting in the flatbed truck in front of his chicken house, Lisa Creech Bledsoe once again spirits her words from the woods, creeks, and crows of her North Carolina Appalachian mountains. In Wolf Laundry, she not only writes love poem after love poem-for friends, for family, for the shining moments we collect like pennies on the windowsill-she also explores the more shadowed places where "forest flickers and swallows / one meal from wild". Here, as in her first collection of poetry, there are tricks and legends, psalms for bees, and ghosts whose hands are filled with strange gifts. There are clean stone hearths with fires ablaze, holy pools, and the deep weight of grief."You already know everything will not turn out well," she writes. "Make gardens anyway."