Standing in the Flock of Connections

Poems that skitter between life and death, "sleep and hurry," at their heart a kind of tender panic.

By turns funny, frank, mysterious, and heartbreaking, Standing in the Flock of Connections, Heather Cadsby's fifth collection of poetry, is one hundred proof associative thought. These poems testify to the human mind's capacity to "do"-taking into account all of the performative, causal, athletic, and sexual connotations of that verb. Many of them come in on an overheard conversation or monologue-mid-fight, mid-stride-and the absent details and specifics often function to open up a space for things to become other things, for the flock of connections to swarm.

I love a pentagram. You can draw that thing
all day freehand, sloppy. Five-star
hotels, movies, generals. Throw it around
like it was a love number, which it is.
Cut an apple horizontally, there it is.
Draw one inside its centre pentagon and so on
nesting smaller forever. Till you call it quits
and start singing Holy etc.
(from "Sunday geometer")

Praise for Heather Cadsby:
"...verse that demonstrates wit and levity as well as a seriousness at its heart...capable of blasphemy...an honest inquiry into life and the inherent duality of the moment."-Gillian Harding-Russell, Prairie Fire Review of Books