"Jan La Perle dream-walks through tenderness, loneliness, and a house-full of troubled love. Birds and a fast mile, a daughter's curious questions, and the small daily adventures of her learning make magic, though threats to its tendrils of peace come close and stay too long. Yet "even when you talk about feeling crazy, your letters / are so calm," a friend says in one of the poems: such is the paradoxical wonder of this collection." -Lisa Lewis " Maybe The Land Sings Back is a holy book. It sings subtly with great attention and wonder, and dread, of being alive, of keeping a lamp lit-of moment to momentous to minor to flight-when so much has fallen into darkness. These poems remind us to soak up what's given and to reach kindly/sadly for all that's been taken. I am taken with this book. It is so gentle and sobering, and...colossally lonesome, ferociously daring. Its beauty is frightening. Its nightmares are possibilities. I feel a little closer to the Vast by these poems. This is a book I'll keep near me." -Matt Hart