Other Side of Broken

Kimberly Casey's second collection, Other Side of Broken, is about both breaking and healing, it holds both heartbreak and hope within its pages. It's about learning to let go, about dealing with illness that haunts your body, about being unable to save a marriage because you must save yourself, about finding peace in orderly nature and untamed wilderness. It's more than just accepting the life you've been given, it's about learning to love that life, to live fully and embrace even the less-than-beautiful things. This collection is a testament to survival and love and that on the other side of broken, something wonderful blooms.

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The poems in Other Side of Broken by Kimberly Casey are gritty, boldly honest, and deeply personal, while also possessing a universal resonance and profound insight into the human condition. Casey recognizes and skillfully uses the cycles of daily routines as the scaffolding upon which hangs the grand drama of life. The poetic images cycle through this book in the same way, revealing the non-linear nature of breaking, being broken, and the journey to the other side.

Jerri Hardesty, CEO and Publishing Editor at New Dawn Unlimited, Inc.

It is the poet's job to translate the human condition on the page, and Kimberly Casey exemplifies that. In her second collection, Other Side of Broken, Casey explores the ways in which we build, break, and re-build in the face of love, loss, and self-discovery. What does it mean to mother without children? How can a broken relationship teach us to heal? How can the beautiful, blooming routine of nature give us steady ground to keep on living? These poems remind us that tenderness is required for our hearts, our bodies, our relationships, but also our memories. Casey's emotionally stirring and achingly real poems give us a blueprint for starting again, and to see our wounds as evidence of a life fully lived.

Ashley M. Jones, Alabama Poet Laureate Emerita

In The Other Side of Broken, Kimberly Casey fearlessly and tenderly probes the wreckage of relationships--and lives--shattered by addiction, and a body wracked with chronic pain and illness. And yet, turning to nature and the animal world for solace, she continues "digging for the bone of joy." Casey's grief-wrought poems brought me to my knees again and again--but they also left me with "the taste of hallelujah on my tongue."

Therese Gleason, author of Hemicrania