Learning to Hold

<p>In Jed Myers' beautiful and bracing collection <em>Learning to Hold </em>we are invited to consider the trauma of war genocide and The Holocaust how What stories aren't told are lived and Memories course the umbilicus. Despite the near-constant backbeat of the human predilection for strife Myers revels in small moments of gratitude reminding us To stop / and honor the battered heads of the rushes and that maples and firs ... are never toppled to ground / till they're ancestor old. In these reverential poems ancestors sputter and flicker like guiding spirits. Fervent and musical these are the poems I want to reach for as we remain mingled / in our mother's breath.</p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>-</span>Martha Silano author of <em>Reckless Lovely </em>and <em>Gravity Assist</em></p><p> </p><p>Jed Myers' poetic power is the gale force that blows through the pages of <em>Learning to Hold</em><em> </em>as this poetry collection wrestles to grasp the whole of humanity's complexity and brutality. A boy's childhood begins as memories course the umbilicus and the legacy of family history held in raised hands winces/flinches and those strange-lit dreams gives way to a larger landscape of the broken and chaotic world where dreams find too much to hold. But these are not dreamy poems. These poems slip in on gentle breezes but leave the reader wind-slapped awakened in body and spirit. We feel these poems and trust the poet's urging to get out and love the world take the road/west cross the known's edge and trust/it isn't all war zone this flesh.</p><p>-Heidi Seaborn author of <em>An Insomniac's Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe </em>and <em>Give a Girl Chaos</em></p><p> </p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Learning to Hold </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>is a breathtaking collection that can be best described in Myers' own powerful words as History held in raised hands winces / flinches and those strange-lit dreams. These poems take us on a journey from the trauma endured by the poet's ancestors in Eastern Europe through their flight across the water and into the present moment of delving into the ways where we come from haunt wherever we are. It is a collection that acknowledges profound continual loss </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>Someone's</em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)> gone. Sunset's own wings / open to the edge of the world... and yet the poems rise out from despair with perseverance or dare I even say hope reminding us You'll go on.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>-Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach author of </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>The Many Names for Mother </em><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1)>40 WEEKS</em></p><p><br></p>