Tuesday Tome - In the Kettle, the Shriek

Just added this fine new book of poetry to my library thanks to listening to a review on the Books and Culture Podcast. After hearing John Wilson, editor of Books and Culture Magazine, read some of the poetry and give the book high marks, I was quite sure I should get it. I've really enjoyed what I've read so far.

From the Publisher:
Here is a poet of clarity and connective grace, full of good will and wily stories alike-funny, neighborly, amused, observant, she's a storyteller with an aphorist's flair for precision. And in In the Kettle, the Shriek she gives testimony to our lives together and our struggles alone, turning at the deepest moments to her highest virtues of sanity and acceptance: 'the things that are going to happen, / let me let them.' This is how Hannah Stephenson makes poetic testimony into a manner of lyric, laic testament." – David Baker

First Things First
Do the first things first,
those things embedded with order
and priority. The urgent things,
the things swirling in your solar plexus
and elbowing you in the heart.

First things first, the things
from which other things spring.
The initial movement, the impulse
to move, the discomfort that triggers
a flicker in your nerves.

First things come first.
You wake, you lift your eyelids,
perform subconscious diagnostics.
What do you need today, you ask
yourself, watching the walls.

First things first, you trust
that by starting the day’s processes,
you will go where you need to.
Even the eighth thing you do
can be the first, even the nineteenth thing.

"First Things First" by Hannah Stephenson,
from In the Kettle, the Shriek,  Gold Wake Press (2013).