Bowlfuls of Blue

A longing for wonder and communion with the natural world can be felt throughout the pages of Alexandra McIntoshs debut poetry collection Bowlfuls of Blue. McIntoshs work like that of Wendell Berry J.R. Tolkien Mary Oliver and Annie Dillard shares a conviction that a writers sense of place nurtures the humanity and authority of their work. That ironically attention to what is at hand lengthens an artists reach. While novels and lyrical prose awakened McIntoshs affinity for grounded literature the poetics of Coleridge Donne and Bishop revealed to her poetrys unique power to freshen ones vision of the familiar particularly Northern Kentuckys Ohio River Valley where she has lived her whole life. This revelation of newness within routine is a frequent return in McIntoshs work which intersperses religious and mythic references-informed by Christian Mystics including Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr- within a conversational tone. A frequent long-distance backpacker McIntosh utilizes sweeping syntax and organic free verse to emulate walking long distances; like long conversations with traveling companions recurring words and refrains mirror the cyclical experience of life in a human body as well as the nature of the entire cosmos. The poems in Bowlfuls of Blue survey communities-human animal spiritual botanical and geographical-to provide an honest meditation on life one that acknowledges both its beauty and violence shining like the glare of the river on a day in August. The reader walks with McIntosh in these pages through dreams the stories of ancestors memories of childhood contemplations on God and humanity her brothers wedding and her grandmothers passing. These are poems of life in all its seasons.Positioning herself among poetic contemporaries like Louis Glück Maurice Manning Jorie Graham Bianca Lynne Spriggs and Brigit Peegen Kelly McIntoshs poetry widens and deepens in its conception of physicality beauty mysticism and the sacred.