Advance praise for Repeat after Me...

The word domestic should be much more fully and widely appreciated, understood, in fact, as encompassing all that truly matters in our lives. This book is the story of a familiar life (hence, the suggestive title) made remarkable by the poet’s attention to detail and by her unique combination of levity and gravity, telling us at one point, for example, with tongue only partially in-cheek, that “my family / quells their objections to one-man-one-woman unions and sanctified suffering / through abuse, addictions, and infidelities.” It is with that same honesty, clarity, and apparent ease that Ackerman insightfully and often delightfully wades through topics as diverse as forest fires, snakes, mammograms, honeysuckle, grief, and of course, love. These are poems to be read repeatedly, and you will recognize yourself in them a little more each time.

—Scott Owens, Author of Sky Full of Stars and Dreaming

How hard it is to keep what lives alive. Kathy Ackerman brings it all to life: love, loss and the fear of loss, revelations about what’s become essential and what no longer is. These poems are ordinary days like the ones we all must hack a path through, but when we look back and consider the way we’ve come an unexpected clarity fills us. Everything ordinary is extraordinary. Repeat after me: so it is with love that lasts, tender and perennial / tender and vulnerable.

—Bill Griffin, author of Riverstory : Treestory

Also by Kathy Ackerman

A Quarrel of Atoms. St. Andrews Press, 2019.

Coal River Road.Livingston Press, 2013.

Knock Wood.Main Street Rag Publishing, 2005.

The Heart of Revolution. University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

Crossbones and Princess Lace.NCWN, 2003.

The Time It Takes.Finishing Line Press, 2002.

About the Author

While waiting for trees to grow, Kathy Ackerman is an administrator and Writer-in-Residence at Isothermal Community College in Spindale, North Carolina, because she is committed to improving lives through learning.She lives on a loblolly farm-in-progress at the true edge of Polk County.Her 2019 collection of poems, A Quarrel of Atoms, was a finalist in several contests and was awarded the Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society.Her other books include Coal River Road, The Heart of Revolution, and three poetry chapbooks.

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