The Art of Catching Jam Before It Burns - Kathy Kituai

This collection of new and selected poems, like the jam that metaphorically spreads itself throughout, "sparkles like liquid gems in a momentary sun." Kathy Kituai takes us deeper into all our lives. She has the ability take the most ordinary experiences and imbue them with extraordinariness, to find the transcendent in the physical, the complex in the simple. These poems are deeply rooted in personal memory and quiet emotional courage. They are vivid acts of seeing-contemporary free verse with the timeless quality of Japanese Tanka.

Kathy Kituai's craft is notable for carefully chosen diction and striking. Water becomes cream of black opal. After a rosella crashes into a window, "how loud the silence that follows."