Iron into Flower

You must change your life / say the rabbis of old begins a poem from Iron into Flower Yvette Neisser's second collection. Like those rabbis Neisser's deceptively simple poems pose age-old questions about memory identity love faith and morality. And when calamity strikes-a death an auto accident a divorce-the poems' speaker also named Yvette Neisser does indeed change her life reclaiming her body her identity even her name. Timeless rituals-the sun's arc the passing of the seasons the quiet pleasures of making tea and flipping tortillas-help reassure even the most troubled souls who haunt these poems. Neisser writes Bless us all the whole imperfect lot of us. And she means it: these are poems of healing and grace.-Katherine E. Young author of Woman Drinking Absinthe Poet Laureate Emerita Arlington VA. Iron into Flower doesn't pull any punches as we readers are drawn into a landscape of loss: Auschwitz Gaza the body first loves and even depression's loss of color as 'orange and red cascade/ and crumble into brown / then earth / then bareness.' In these moving and rhythmic texts where Neisser's children's faces are 'all that matter ' the poet finds beauty and strength in her yearning to 'learn the shape of faith.'-Nancy Naomi Carlson Author of An Infusion of Violets. I relished this dual-journey of a book where mother traverses the Deep South in the mid-sixties on her way to Mexico. But also landscapes of memory-a hike with father where the years have etched rings around my life-in poem after poem the arresting passage of time; or a kind of lifespan within a single poem from the pull of oars up the quiet river...to the closing of eyelids. But we also encounter work that doesn't flinch in the face of harrowing histories-pieces that shine a mirror inside [our]selves / examine [our] flaws. In short the stuff of art-this gorgeous arc that doesn't shy from digging deep.-Francisco Aragón author of After Rubén Director of Letras Latinas