Books published by Moonpath Press

“Rena Priest addresses those who crave ‘the meat of beasts with beets and leeks.’ And while she insists that ‘Nature makes you pay,’ her poems tell us that through a ‘wistful song of sighs.’ The world is not always comfortable, but her poems never ‘lose touch with the fluidity of the spirit.’ Patriarchy Blues is an amazing collection.” —James Bertolino, author of Ravenous Bliss: New & Selected Love Poems

“Night Beyond Black pushes through the limits of the given—color, light, natural world, experience—to question what lies beyond with level-headed intelligence and, always, kindness. Edstrom's language is devoid of pretension yet elegant and precise, like the inside of a beehive. She shares with Stanley Kunitz a way of perception that is equal measures playfulness and gravitas, rooted on the soil around them, open-canopied.  Almost hidden by the beauty of these poems, there is a small history of the American West of small farmers and quiet small-town folk—their love of nature and their decency passed on to the poet, and from her to her descendants. Having been ‘recommended to poetry’ perhaps later than she would have liked, Edstrom delivers a full-length collection unrushed, mature, and as resplendent as the sea light she so loves.”   ~ Lorraine Healy, author of The Habit of Buenos Aires and Abraham’s Voices"Suffused with Nature’s palette, the aptly titled Night Beyond Black is a delicately nuanced poetic exploration of shifting darks and lights, sometimes as interpreted by visual artists (édouard Manet) , other writers (Richard Wilbur) and always originating from her inner impulses. From Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night where the light makes darkness ‘bearable’ to romance’s ‘eating the bread of love’ in ‘flickering sunlight,’ Edstrom showers light infused with her reflections of familial love as the ‘least expected’ granddaughter’s pressing against the window at dawn catching ‘the glitter of the world,’ leaves her equally spellbound. With this contemporary re-picturing of the Romantic sensibility, Edstrom’s Night Beyond Black enriches us all.” ~Whitney Scott, TallGrass Writers Guild President and member of the Society of Midland Authors“The poems of Night Beyond Black ‘dip below the surface of a life, go deep’ to explore a world where ‘silence sings’ and ‘a flock of birds turns / flashing a dark underside.’ Through wilderness, grief, and undulating fields of wheat, Edstrom leads, along paths of insight and wild violets. Hers are words we will savor, experience like the soft tap of the honey bee brushing our lips, knowing ‘something necessary (will) emerge.'"   ~Ronda Broatch, author of Lake of Fallen Constellations

“In Gone to Gold Mountain, poet Peter Ludwin brings to life the little-known story of Chea Po and his fellow Chinese gold miners, massacred in 1887 by Eastern Oregon pioneers.  Ludwin embodies Chea Po and his experiences of breathtaking racism, homesickness, and dislocation.  He imbues these persona poems, letters, and laments with the finely-drawn landscapes of Hells Canyon and China, glowing lanterns, and an eagle circling the canyon rim.  Chea Po seems to have haunted Ludwin until finally, here, his life and death are told justly.  We are the richer for it.”—Kathleen Flenniken “Peter Ludwin is a writer who knows there are poems no one asks for, but everyone needs—so he sets out to write them.  In this book, he travels to a place of massacre, then enhances the story of trauma with longing, devotion, hope, and the unfurling tendril of life that reaches generations beyond a tragedy.  The poems speak as letters, news items, memories, secret notes of lover to lost soul.  Ludwin’s lens of imagination pierces a hidden past at a remote place, and his lyric archive invents what might otherwise be forgotten, what he calls ‘the speckled rhythms’ of change.  Read this book for insight into a hidden chapter of international history, and to break a code of silence across cultures.  You will recognize more poems need rich research, and history needs to sing.”—Kim Stafford author of Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: A Memoir, and Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer's Craft “Ludwin’s haunting poems resurrect an era of vehement anti-Chinese sentiment and the U.S. by focusing on the Hells Canyon massacre in 1887—a segment of U.S. history conveniently omitted from the textbooks.  To a great extent, the work’s strength lies in its understated eloquence, riveting imagery, and frequent use of persona poems in different voices.  With great insight, skill and compassion, Ludwin has produced a fine collection that succeeds in fleshing out this nightmare episode from our past.”—Diana Anhalt, author of because there is no return.     

“Like a well-traveled rucksack, this collection speaks of journeys, the poet animmigrant setting out from the home country of his imagination. Each poem servesas a vehicle and destination, and the scattered outposts—Iceland, the Dakotas, theQuinault River, Andalusia—lay their claims to portions of the poet’s character,memory, heritage. As well, we find our own homes in the reading.”—John Willson, Pushcart Prize winner and author of The Son We Had“Evocative poems beckon one to follow in his footsteps through the territoriesof youth and age, across the varied landscapes of Puget sound, Dakota prairies,and Iceland. Along the way, artfully rendered images capture the spirits of thecharacters who inhabit these poems, offering thoughtful reflection on the heartand human experience.—Kristen Gard Hotchkiss, Bainbridge Island poet 

“Opening in the aftermath of a breakup, this book moves through an entire calendar year of grief and recovery before closing with poems so sensuous and raw that it is possible to believe love’s pleasure is not merely worth but is also somehow deepened by its pain. At the book’s heart is the body that loves another body, suffers its absence, and lives to love again. In the last poem, the speaker lies in bed with a new lover, composing a cable that reads: ‘one of us will leave/I will remember my body / ached for you like no other stop.’ That “stop” ends the telegram and the book but is also a command to banish worry and allow the speaker to, as she has in all these deeply felt and sparely written poems, live in the tender, stung moment.”~Rebecca Foust, author of Paradise Drive, winner of the Press 53 Prize for Poetry “Somewhere in a great library of the heart, beyond Fan Fiction for Young Comets, near the Biographies of Old Oaks, between Desire 101 and AP Capture is Amy MacLennan’s The Body, A Tree. Look for a space where a book is missing. If it hasn’t been checked out, then it’s escaped on its own. It is unshelvable. You can hear it, reading itself aloud: ‘Allow brevity’ it says. ‘Allow sweetness. Allow smudged ink.’ With her first full-length collection, MacLennan has conjured poetry of gentle authority, at once bold and vulnerable.”~Brendan Constantine, author of Calamity Joe “Taut with precision and economy, lush with the music of Eros, The Body, A Tree gives us remarkable poems of the body—sensual, strikingly sensate, fully embodied. With Amy MacLennan’s innovative diction and memorable imagery, even the weather—that talk-worn topic—becomes newly alive. A summer afternoon storm is ‘…a hurly-burly jig shaking its way/ across the valley floor—fuss, heavage,/ blinks and streaks, low bellowed tone…” This whole book is a marvelous storm of lust and longing, anticipation and satiation. Reading these poems, I’m both immensely satisfied and pell-mell avid to read them again.”~Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita