Learning to Swim

In this rare collected gift of poetry and memoir, Learning to Swim does not disappoint. From the simple way Saiser captures the smallest of things that make up our lives, these economical yet powerful poems transport us to the plains with snow where the “snow which well all day brush against the shingles” to the galaxy where we are alone with airplains blinking paths through starts and crickets stirring in the weeds like enemies or memories dredged from the sixth grade where “Mrs. Fischer loved language and knew its power, so she drew its shadows on the chalkboard.” In the end, we are left with the familiar, “a jagged tear in the kitchen ceiling,” “a fault line” where “guests pause when deciding on chardonnay or beer.”

It is a collection like this that brings us back to what we love most, connection to a world that at best is indifferent, and Saiser’s deftly rendered story of place and its characters does not disappoint.

MARJORIE SAISER’S novel-in-poems, Losing the Ring in the River (University of New Mexico Press, 2013) won the Willa Award for Poetry. A folio of her poems exploring the relationship between humans and their environments won Fourth River’s 2016 competition. Saiser has received four Nebraska Book Awards. Her poems have been published in Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, Poet Lore, Rattle, Nimrod, Chattahoochee Review, Bosque, American Life in Poetry, and at poetmarge.com.