Description
Book SynopsisAcclaimed for combining the accessible and profound, Kim Dower's poetry has been described by
The Los Angeles Times as "Sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache," and by
O Magazine as "unexpected and sublime." Her third collection,
Last Train to the Missing Planet, rockets forward in this trajectory, taking us on a journey to places we've often visited but never seen. Buy a ticket and hop aboard: experience love, longing, and passion tipped sideways; irreverent, touching, and disarmingly sexy as illuminated by an original and brilliant light. Lose yourself in the unexplored sensations of the ordinary in this engaging year of moments, both comforting and terrifying—and always extraordinary.
Trade Review“In her third collection (after Slice of Moon), Dower invests the most ordinary moments with a significance that doesn’t feel strained. “Dawn cracks me open like a clam,” she proclaims in “Another Morning. “Am I alone/ pretending it’s you pushing me// out of sleep, or us together, a team half waking.” And when the situation turns serious, she doesn’t become grim but reveals the passion that underpins many of her poems: “From our kisses, obliterate it with desire,” she says of the end of the world, “. . . locked in an emergency embrace.” A poem on natural disasters concedes that “life changing decisions will be made” yet ends, “it’s only a cleansing for the paradise that can lie ahead,” and many of the poems resonate with that same determined energy. Dower paints scenes nicely (“Santa Ana winds lifting bones from the earth”), and even an encounter with a raccoon on a Los Angeles byway is invested with magic, as the speaker imagines the creature a cursed prince or princess looking for someone to break the spell. VERDICT Throughout, Dower maintains a fine level of craft and reverberant feeling. A satisfying collection for most readers.”
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
**Poetry from Last Train to the Missing Planet featured in O, the Oprah Magazine
Featured on The Writer's Almanac
