Amanda Cook

Ironstone Whirlygig Amanda Cook

Poetry. A daybook, a memoir, and a serial poem, IRONSTONE WHIRLYGIG is also something else. The book began as a blog (ironstonewhirlygig.blogspot.com) written in stolen moments--in the hours between the local closing and the sun coming up, when children and husband are asleep and the world is quiet and still enough to allow the mind to remake the world with words. Over days and years, a world unfolds in this book, palpably present and haunted by absence, a wounded world marked by time and its slow, sure passing, a world to love. Amanda Cook has written a book to savor, to read and reread, a book to live with. Amanda Cook's poetry is authentic, empowered, and radiates thought and feeling. Reading her poems is like a friend talking to me. There's no poetic pretense or literary effect. I ask myself, how does she do it? How can she attain such beauty in a seemingly effortless manner? The poems explore love, family, the domestic life, friends, politics, her beloved city of Gloucester (she knows every secret corner), and the everyday common place experiences that we often overlook. At the same time, she's not afraid to take on such literary icons as Charles Olson, and fearlessly.--Joseph Torra