Undoing Orion's Belt

Amy Plettner, like Whitman, is a poet of the body as well as the soul. Her poems smell of loam and sage, of trees and rivers. Her lines are organic and muscular, moving with the rhythms of the breath and the seasons. Her poems about family are not out of Rockwell or Hallmark. Hers deal with a genetic cord that s a jump rope hissing like Grandmother s geese. Her family values include fast feet, a mind of one s own, and a good left hook. In a poem entitled Kissing Cousins, in which cousins do some serious kissing, she notes her family Bible was lost by her great-great uncle on Deal Beach, where the scripture was scattered like spilled semen/among the dead. Of her beloved home turf, a Nebraska nature sanctuary, she notes, Grass drapes entrance of badger hole/ hoarfrost gathers elegant lace. Hot inhalation,/ so much breathing between my toes.
-William Trowbridge, author of Ship of Fool

Deep-rooted in the visceral and spiritual, Amy Plettner s poems possess an understanding of our hunger for physical contact with the natural world and with each other. Along with the corporeal is a tension between emotional fulfillment and insatiableness that reminds us how primal we are at heart.
-Teri Youmans Grimm, author of Dirt Eaters