Sufficient Emptiness
poetry
Marjorie Power
ISBN: 978-1-7368477-1-8
6 x 9; 100 pages; $18.25
available now
Sufficient Emptiness is more than a book
Sufficient Emptiness holds life’s contradictions in balance on the fine edge of language. With elegance and grace, Power captures moments of connection and reverie. With sly wit and savvy insight, she meditates on history, memory, and art. This is a collection of those “hushed thefts” in life that change us, as well as a roadmap of how to traverse the journey. Sufficient Emptiness is more than a book, it is the balm we need for the wound of these difficult times.
—Amy Wray Irish, author of The Nature of the Mother
Marjorie Power holds the camera like a visionary filmmaker, moving deftly between voices and locations, narrative and form, twists and omissions. Each poem in Sufficient Emptiness speaks its own distinct language as it explores its poem-world, whether it’s a family raising chickens, a landscape defined by a dominant tree species, or the reappearing face of a lost woman. These poems offer mysteries and questions without oversimplifying answers; they are not just about what we see and remember, but how we see and remember.
—Amy Miller, author of The Trouble with New England Girls
Marjorie Power is one of my favorite poets writing today. Her words, themes, and visions transform time and space and carry us back not only to her past, her family, and the people she has encountered on her journeys, but to our own past, family, and people whose paths crossed ours for a moment, a season, a lifetime. This collection also focuses on the natural world we all live in, forcing us to acknowledge our impact. The poems are powerful, usually brief, and razor sharp. They linger in your mind like crystalline visions.
—Chris Helvey, Editor-in-Chief, Trajectory Journal
With wry wit and keen observation, Power navigates a complex, ever-changing, often crazy world with grace and insight. Pointing her lens at the ironies of aging, the vagaries of grief, or losses endured by the natural world, she reframes the ordinary and the mean. She invites us to linger in a deeper place.
—Linda Strever, author of Against My Dreams