Cardinal Marks

<p>In the compelling voice of a debut nurse-poet <em>Cardinal Marks </em>explores how we navigate the turbulent waters of loss and pain and the unexpected guideposts that chart a path towards clarity and solid ground.  </p><p><br></p><p>Cardinal as an adjective derives from the early 14th-century Latin <em>cardinalis</em> principal chief essential literally pertaining to a hinge from cardo (genitive cardinis) that on which something turns or depends; originally door hinge. As much as this chapbook is about maps geography borders and compass points-the marks (including tattoos) by which we find our way-Virginia LeBaron's <em>Cardinal Marks </em>also attends to all manner of hinges to whatever permits two separate entities or experiences to connect: to doorways for example that open and close-in the heart or in relationships. These poems explore the territory between guilt and forgiveness childhood and adulthood and perhaps especially between life to death: the tender liminal place LeBaron writes in Where I need my mother to stand that is neither light nor dark / but the dusky in-between / the snow / before footsteps / fall. Heir to Elizabeth Bishop's <em>Geography III Cardinal Marks </em>travels unflinchingly through the coordinates and connective tissue of loss and love with a sensibility that is both bodily and mysterious.</p><p><strong> -Lisa Russ Spaar</strong> Professor and Director of Creative Writing University of Virginia </p><p> award-winning poet and author of 12 books including<em> Orexia</em> (Persea Books 2017) </p><p> <em>Satin Cash </em>(Persea Books 2008) and <em>Glass Town</em> (Red Hen Press 1999).</p><p><br></p><p>It's hard to believe <em>Cardinal Marks</em> is a debut collection its poems are so finely wrought so mature and fully realized. It's all here-a sure command of form of language and tone a skillful blending of high lyric and harrowing truth-all here and then some. These are real poems-adult life in all its complexity-beauty and loss met with a frank and deeply intelligent gaze with insight grown from lived experience. Virginia LeBaron has been places and done things and it's our great good fortune that her thoughtful deeply moving poems are here to tell us the news from far flung lands the house next door and the frontier country between this life and the next.</p><p><strong> -Jon Loomis</strong> Professor of Creative Writing University of Wisconsin Eau Claire </p><p> award-winning writer and author of 3 books of poetry including <em>Vanitas Motel </em></p><p><em> (</em>Oberlin College Press 1998)<em> The Pleasure Principle</em> (Oberlin College Press 2001) and </p><p> <em>The Mansion of Happiness</em> (Oberlin College Press 2016).</p><p><br></p>