Whispers from the Aural World

Shells, ears, damaged mirrors... the images in Karolyn Redoute's powerful new book, Whispers from the Aural World, conjure a mysterious emotional landscape that is as real as the lost city of Detroit where she grew up, and as heartbreaking as the silence between parents and children or, later on, between lovers. At times reading these poems I felt as if the Lady of Shallot had returned in the twenty-first century to speak to us again of the shadow world of personal isolation. Redoute makes us feel that there's hope, that through the discipline of poetry we can force the shards of broken glass into focus and find our whole reflections again.

- Maura Stanton, author of Immortal Sofa

The poems in Karolyn Redoute's new collection, Whispers from the Aural World, are powerful and evocative. They deal honestly with family, with the people and places of childhood, with the weight of memory. They ask the reader to confront all the things said, and left unsaid, to look into mirrors and through windows, within and without, in hope of movement towards healing.

- Robert Pfeiffer, author of Bend, Break and The Inexhaustible Before

Prophecy and memory exist on the same plane in Whispers from the Aural World by Karolyn Redoute. Children pause in the space between hours, a father drives a house like a car, and a staircase patiently anticipates turning into a story. With homegrown mysticism, Redoute discovers magic in the corners of rooms and in the corners of the mind, building a delicate bridge across childhood loss and wonder to an adult understanding of identity.

- James Cihlar, author of The Shadowgraph