Psyche's Weathers, Poems by Cynthia Atkins

Singing about the swirling winds of our lives, Cynthia Atkins maps the uncertainty and ambiguity of human experience:

It's going to rain. Don't you know
it's the forecast that is unsure of us--
Looking ahead when we should
have been looking behind.

The elegant poems of Psyche's Weathers gracefully explore the inner and outer storms that blow through our world.

Sample Poems by Cynthia Atkins

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"Cynthia Atkins knows well that we live at the mercy of the unalterable systems of time and weather, and that our minds are full of 'intangible ache' and 'interior storms.' Her response, and the inspired industry of these poems, is to summon metaphor to the work it is best suited for: pursuing the ineffable and reconciling the contradictory. Atkins takes on both of these necessary tasks and writes her way (and ours) toward a more salutary climate. 'The weather always has something to say," one poem claims. As a keenly perceptive and passionate channeler of inner and outer weathers, so does Cynthia Atkins."--Jeanne Marie Beaumont, author of Curious Conduct and Placebo Effects

"For Cynthia Atkins, the weather is both an external and an internal state. The poems in Psyche's Weathers pay attention to the natural forces that govern our days, the procession of the months and the seasons, the progression from cradle to grave. Here are snow and rain, constellations and darkness, the 'heady light' of April, an 'atomic winter.' Atkins's poems remind us of the confluence and the argument between what is within and what is without, what is beautiful and perilous, expected and unexpected, mysterious and ordinary about human experience."--Carrie Brown

"Cynthia Atkins' poems sharpen the focus on what's at stake in the world and what can be transcended. Myth is reinvented; relationships deepen and define themselves; and the image is caught in extreme close-ups. Whether ekphrastic, historic, or personal there's always song, always the clarity of faces one 'can no longer name,' and the courage to get 'too close to names they can no longer / mention.' Atkins' poems contain a lucid, sobering memory in which she 'leans into the past /...like an old room entered new // by a stranger.' Indeed, here's a poet who will continue blowing 'kisses to her public,' and we're fortunate to catch them here in the forecast of Psyche's Weathers."--A. Van Jordan, author of Rise and M-a-c-n-o-l-i-a.

Cynthia Atkins was born and raised in Chicago, IL. She earned her BFA and MA at the University of Illinois, and an MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including, American Letters & Commentary, Bloomsbury Review, BOMB, Caketrain, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly, The Florida Review, Good Foot, New York Quarterly, Seattle Review, Seneca Review, Sou'wester, and Verse. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at Roanoke College, and is artistic director of Writers@Jordan House. Atkins is also a visual artist and lives with her husband, writer/artist Phillip Welch and their sons on the Maury River in Rockbridge County, VA.

ISBN: 978-1933456874, 116 pages

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