One Step at a Time

<p class=ql-align-justify>Whether Alice Kavounas is walking the bounds of her home in Cornwall speaking across time to her brother or wryly contemplating two funerary caskets one containing a dog's ashes the other those of a family member her poems are distinguished by clarity of observation by wit and by individual grace. We go from Cornwall to San Francisco to New York; to Minsk London and Palm Springs; always her voice is measured searching. She is interested in scale; in minutiae as in her beautiful study of a painting of a finch or in finding herself a holidaying bystander in 1968 witnessing tanks enroute to the invasion of former Czechoslovakia. This acutely-assembled collection is rich in such telling intersections and her narrative energy is flawless. She follows threads of thought and memory and imagination with exact insight and compassion. She reminds us that unless we give honour and attention to the past we are lost. Her poems are rich in those qualities that we require of poems so that we may better comprehend and celebrate our human lives. -Penelope Shuttle </p><p class=ql-align-center><br></p><p><br></p>