Join Kimberly Kralowec to celebrate the publication of We retreat into the stillness of our own bones (Tolsun Books 2022). This powerfully quiet poetry collection, written during Kim’s husband’s treatment for a serious illness, explores the multifaceted realities of close relationships and interior spaces. Through vibrant synesthesia and graceful lyricism, these poems merge our private experiences with the natural world, allowing us to witness the surrender necessary for genuine intimacy. This event will be virtual, and the reading will be followed by a Q&A hosted by Allison Hartsoe and Shani Trudgian Please note that this will be a co-ed event. You can purchase We retreat into the stillness of our own bones from Tolsun Books here.
Praise for We retreat into the stillness of our own bones:
This brilliant, magnetic chapbook moves with an evocative and acute intensity, quietly transforming the microscopic into the vast, and the vast into the microscopic. It is a journey of a book, full of movement, beauty, love, and grief. Imagine a world in which we can “let the bees breathe … for the parts of the skin the light goes through,” or in which “plant[ing] light / in small spaces, / false gems” is a possible task. Kralowec’s We retreat into the stillness of our own bones is sublime in a way only dreams and poems can be.
—Sara Eliza Johnson, author of Bone Map
With a painterly eye towards detail, and deeply grounded in the natural world, these lacy, atmospheric poems are unabashed in their bold ambition to chart the vagaries, rhythms, frailties and complexity of what it means to be close to another human—to see and be seen.
—Louise Mathias, author of The Traps
The images in Kimberly Kralowec’s We retreat into the stillness of our own bones take on such stunning musculature that they lift these lyrics over the head of the speaker, their whole weight a work of dynamic specificity. “We find twilights of reef birds/in new corners of the house— / though our eyes are still closed / and our rooms long ago abandoned the rectangular.” These poems remind us that we are active participants in language that is forever recalibrating what it means to love the world.
—Kimberly Burwick, author of Brightword
Charles Simic wrote about the “art of reassembling fragments of preexisting images in such a way as to form a new image.” In her debut collection, Kimberly Kralowec elevates this concept beyond the visual, awakening all our senses to new ways of engaging within our emotional and physical landscapes. With subtle eloquence, she uncovers the keen edge between strength and vulnerability “when not every brightening / turns out to be dawn.”
—Linda Jackson Collins, author of Painting Trees
About the author and hosts:
Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook, We Retreat into the Stillness of Our Own Bones (Tolsun Books 2022). Her poetry appears in journals such as Nixes Mate Review, The Inflectionist Review, and The Night Heron Barks, and she was recently named a finalist in the River Styx International Poetry Contest and a semi-finalist for the Jane Underwood Poetry Prize. A lawyer by profession, she holds an English degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California and lives in San Francisco. Her poetry blog is anapoetics.com.
Allison Hartsoe is the author of The Age of Customer Equity: Data-Driven Strategies to Build a Sustainable Company. Allison’s experience and passion for analysis allow her to see future trends and relate them all the way back to the tactical moves her clients need to make today. She has built and executed digital customer analytics strategies for Fortune 500 customers, including Nike, GlaxoSmithKline, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Seagate. Allison was recently named one of the Top 100 Women in Technology. Listen to her interviews with successful customer-centric executives on the Customer Equity Accelerator podcast.
Shani Trudgian is a lovely person who is traveling a spiritual journey. She is also the owner of Trudgian Properties.