Karen Enns

That Other Beauty Karen Enns

Poetry. In her debut collection, Karen Enns's focus is the beauty present to us in almost every moment, however mundane or apparently lost. Her argument is that the act of attention itself is the most fundamental of these beauties. THAT OTHER BEAUTY ranges across memories of a farm childhood, and further back, to the Mennonite exodus from Russia. We encounter immigrants, furnace repairmen and grocers, dead cats, a raven lifting into "the clear, bright density of rain." Enns meditates on Bach, on solitude, and on exile both accidental and imposed, weaving darkness and light with great fidelity and authority.