Whipstitches by Randi Ward

These poems are never merely pastoral, and their emotional range belies their small size. Here are poems that move from the lyrical and humorous to the acerbic, the rueful, and even the creepy. “Every little whipstitch,” we can hear Randi Ward’s haunted and haunting voice moving between worlds like a wily shape-shifter. — Maggie Anderson, author of A Space Filled With Moving and Years That Answer Praise for Whipstitches “What a fresh, disturbing new voice is found in this collection! Imagine the quirky, revelatory ways Emily Dickinson saw the world meshed with the succinct clarities of Lorine Niedecker. Now add a dose of H. P. Lovecraft, and you have some sense of the triumph these surprising little poems achieve.” — Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia and author of Green-Silver and Silent “Each poem in Whipstitches is a world Ward makes us see, or see again, with a child’s clarity melded to metaphor. Underlying the whole is both abiding love for the homeplace and knowledge