Lori Desrosiers Knihy

"Poet Henrik Nordbrant speaks of 'the glow which approaching death/ leaves on photographs of people who died young/ in the memory of those left behind.' Such is the aura of singular brilliance in the face of utter bereavement and forfeiture manifested in the verse found in Lori Desrosiers’ new volume of poems, Keeping Planes in the Air. The poetry tendered here widens from an insular grief toward 'finding beauty in imperfection/ how skin stretches to accommodate/ bones their restless march towards death.' We glimpse the poet’s vision in a space where 'the ghost of our intentions/ lingers in peripheral vision/ like the flash of light/ from a torn retina,' and in those glimmers of an afterlife 'we are torn/ between staying put/ and taking flight.' Keeping Planes in the Air is for any of us who have witnessed the ambiguity of holding onto our lives and loves in the constant presence of an impending loss that leaves us (and the poet) with a wounded wonderment ‘which is/ more than [we] can fathom/ or just enough.'” Christina Lovin