Crucial Blue: Poems by Madeleine Mysko

Cherry Grove Collections

P.O Box 541106

Cincinnati, OH 45254-1106

Tel: (513) 474-3761  Fax: (815) 301-8946

Web: www.cherry-grove.com

The elegant poems of this collection establish Madeleine Mysko

as a sharp, astute observer of the extraordinary within the ordinary.

"Madeleine Mysko's subject in this fine, fluent first collection is no less than a thorough examination of the significant moments of everyday life. 'I seek particularity,' she writes, and in that particularity presents ordinary experience as rich and meaningful.  An acute observer of both nature and human nature, Mysko desires to 'reach deep," and in doing so, invites the reader to enter a world made whole and sacred by her penetrating eye and practiced heart.  There is a striking, unforced reverence here for all aspects of the human, and a fluidity reminiscent of Philip Larkin."

       Elizabeth Spires, A Memory of the Future.

"Madeleine Mysko is both poet and nurse, two vocations that depend on accurate observation and tender concern for what is human, for the wounding that has been and the healing that might be.  In these poems, memory becomes a metaphor for both the beauty of life and its uncertainties, and the natural world becomes a path that might lead to transcendence.  Whether on the roof of Johns Hopkins Hospital, awaiting July fireworks with patients "in wheelchairs, pushing IV poles," or recalling the arrival on her ward of soldiers wounded in Vietnam, or imagining how wild berries might appear 'in every shade of bruise,' Mysko offers us poems that bless us with her attention to our fragility, to our beautiful imperfection."

       Cortney Davis, Taking Care of Time

"The broken-green odor blessed the air/ as I carried that crucial blue across the lawn."  There is a mostly unexplained melancholy that runs through Madeleine Mysko's Crucial Blue that is skillfully balanced by an exquisite music coupled with a strong connection to nature revealed through the poet's keen eye for lush detail."  

       Sally Bliumis-Dunn, Echolocation 

"Sometimes life feels like a room of sorrow.  And yet to dwell in such a house is a paradoxical gift, for against the day's darkness we see flashes of blessings and grace.  It is enlightening to hold both things close--'this wretchedness, this comfort'--as the small yet magnificent poems of Crucial Blue so amply demonstrate. Such poetry is vital and necessary, for it inspires a new and deeper love for our broken world, and a fresh chorus of praise for the fleeting beauty and holy mystery of our days."

       Richard Jones, Stranger on Earth

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ISBN: 978-1-62549-303-3, 102 pages, $19.00, Softcover