GOAT FARM ROAD Poems from the Adirondacks - by Catherine Norr (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Goat Farm Road, Poems from the Adirondacks presents a glimpse into life being lived in a little-populated area of Upstate New York, off-grid, in woodland and wildlife surroundings. The collection is an invitation to share the healing silence and visual delights of seasons and nature unfolding. Some lyrical selections touch on aging, brush with cancer and mortality. Others are lighter, more playful. A few haiku and tanka deliver quick snapshots of the author's observations, while longer poems provide inner meditations and reflections.

Review Quotes

Catherine Norr's new chapbook unveils quiet wonders along woodland roads through the Adirondack mountains. We are shown turtles hatching from their shells, leaves crackling with color, and the tangible silence of a quilted cloud. Even as a frightening diagnosis looms, these tanka, haiku, and free verse poems celebrate nature's miraculous transformations.

-Jackie Craven, author of Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters and Our Lives Became Unmanageable

This lovely collection brings to mind the Japanese term shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, scientifically proven to be good for your health. If you cannot get to the Adirondacks, stroll through these pages, where you will find a similarly salutary peace and calm. Norr uses sequences of Japanese forms, both tanka and haiku, as well as free verse, to reach our destination, "Goat Farm Road" "so far off the main highway / that a GPS shows it only as / leave the road -." If you travel with her, "awareness alters as you pass through the veil" ("On the Road to Mountain Cabin") to where "Wood Thrush melodies haunt the forest" and "deep breaths come easy" ("Spring Back Home Is: "). You will want to return again and again to this quiet place, and its feelings "tender, so tender" ("Seedling Reflects").

-Barbara Ungar, author of Save Our Ship and After Naming the Animals.