Mothernest by Sandy Longley

Praise for Mothernest

 “‘Let me be your river’ writes this poet of the natural world, and indeed that is what Sandy Longley achieves in Mothernest, a collection of quiet push and pull and sustained flow from its opening poem to the last, which is a study of an opossum living out her life ‘in this in-between place.’ A river is an in-between place, literally cutting through and creating liminality; a migration is an in-between journey. The poet feels so at home in these locations of temporary solace and traveling. I remember that these points of transience are my own home environment, too, my natural habitat, and the perfect backdrop for poetry. I know what I love about this book: its confidence and concision, its translation of the world of bears and crows into a language that does not impose on animals our human assumptions and needs. This is a poet in the tradition of Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney, whose poems are at home with borders and frontiers between danger and softness, life and death. ‘I am a Fainting goat,’ Longley writes, ‘knocked on my back, one eye open to the sky . . . Touch my curved horns – tender.’” 

David Keplinger, author of The World to Come 

“The gathering of poems in Longley’s collection embodies the beauty of nature, journeys of literature and history with elements of self-reflection. Gentle and subtle each poem’s telling travels through various migrations and gives the reader a smooth voice to follow into the depths of daily life.” 

Phyllis Carito, author of The Stability of Trees in the Winds of Grief

“Sandy Longley’s very heart is revealed in her new collection of poems, Mothernest: large and expansive, capable of breaking, but also her mind – wise, imaginative, and creative. She takes the observed world and makes it shimmer with meaning. ‘Such a brutal, beautiful place is this world,’ she writes. Who could disagree? And ‘when the heart is comfortless’ we can turn to Sandy Longley and in fact to our inner selves, keepers of Poetry.” 

Dennis Minsky, Naturalist and contributor to WCAI’s A Cape Cod Notebook and The Provincetown Independent