Jump Straight Up

<p class=ql-align-justify>Rushing in as a welcome surprise these new late poems were mostly composed both late in the year and late in the author's years. In <strong><em>Jump Straight Up</em></strong><em></em> Jarold Ramsey versifies and pokes at an odd knot of themes: encroaching age overtaking a long wonderful marriage; the delights of grandparenthood; awareness of our interspecies situation in the everyday natural order; the blessings and challenges of Central Oregon's canyons summits and rangelands; and the intriguing ways the mostly horizontal left-to-right axis of our lives seems to shift in old age toward the vertical-way down (and out) but also jump straight up (in the imagination).</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p class=ql-align-justify>Whether it's with elegies or tributes Ramsey prompts us toward joy urging us to <em>jump straight up / free of the gravity of time.</em></p><p><strong><em>-Paulann Petersen author of My Kindred</em></strong></p><p class=ql-align-right><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p class=ql-align-justify><em>Jump Straight Up</em> is a buoyantly beautiful report from a Northwest master at age 85.</p><p><strong>-John Daniel author of</strong><strong style=color: rgba(209 34 41 1)> </strong><strong><em>Gifted</em></strong></p><p class=ql-align-right><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Ramsey delivers accounts of history local lore love for kinfolk and yearning to understand the changes carrying us all along richly in need of poems just like these.</p><p><strong>-Kim Stafford author of <em>Singer Come from Afar</em></strong></p><p><br></p>