De Kooning Snow

"Smallen deftly uses the heartbreaking power of plain language to allow the hard fact of loss to intrude upon her lovely meditations....Over the course of the book, Smallen transforms snow from a metaphor for loss to a 'mythology of joy,'" Minneapolis Star Tribune.
 

Literal and imaginary classifications of snow lyrically delineate and frame poems about presence, memory, erasure, making, and meaning. Four of the poems in this collection have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and ten have been anthologized. As Alison Hawthorne Deming notes, "Smallen writes with resonant clarity . . . work that beautifully marries attention and evanescence."