Poetry

Linda Nemec Foster writes friom a place of deep passion - vivid, vital, alive to the sizzle of the story and need. Her sounds and images crackle and explode. If these rich "History of the Body" prose poems don't ignite you, nothing will! -Naomi Shihab Nye

Poetry. "A humanist at heart, Linda Nemec Foster has demanded from her poetry an artfulness that engages ordinary life. With each new book her work has continued to mature, deepen, console, surprise, and TALKING DIAMONDS is as wise as it is lovely"--Stuart Dybek.

"The first lines in Linda Nemec Foster's Ten Songs from Bulgaria, sing 'Small lives, small lives/we are trapped inside/small lives.' The paradox here is that Foster's poems reveal how large and rich the worlds are in which these small lives are lived. In line after line, we encounter the depths and reach of those who live outside the zones of everyday safety. Foster makes herself vulnerable to a world 'as tangible as fog' with her own penetrating observations...
and her poems reflect the haunting music of ode and elegy." Jack Ridl

Read these lighthearted verse adventures out loud on Halloween, around the campfire, or anytime just for fun. A Werewolf stalks New York in "Police Story." "Gorfagog" is a thirty-ton monster frog. "Why the Willow Weeps" explains the mythological origins of the weeping willow. "Higby Hyscorer," is off to the moon again. And in "Halloween Golf," a skull is found in the bunker at the 14th hole. Enjoy

Poetry designed to be read out loud to kids from pre-school ages and up. Even Adults enjoy the rhyme and rhythm of these poems which honor the spirit and style of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic work, "A Child's Garden of Verses.”

“Sometimes, a book of poems transcends the form and becomes pure experience. I Am a Mute Iraqi with a Voice is a startling call to memory and mourning for an Iraq that is “dead,” an ululation for all that is lost in war after war after war. In these poems, Iraqis are divided not by politics but by location and circumstance; those fortunate enough to live in America are wracked with guilt, and those left behind are trapped indoors. Namou interrogates this split within herself, with poem after poem, in an attempt to reconcile memories of a life in Baghdad with the safety of suburban American life and see past the divisions of history to an impossibly fraught future. I Am a Mute Iraqi is a troubling, necessary collection of poems urging us to recognize, and never forget, the personal and cultural consequences of war.” Trish Harris, founding editor of the Pea River Journal

Inspired by Foster's first trip to Poland in 1996 and her Polish-American heritage, Amber Necklace from Gdansk explores Polish immigrants' experiences with assimilation in the US, those immigrants' children's attitudes toward their ethnicity, and how these attitudes have been colored by America's typically disinterested view toward Eastern Europe- the other Europe that only recently began to emerge from history's shadow.

Mirroring the human response to the natural world, this book is a rare synthesis of stunning landscape photography and understated haiku poetry.