Time Is Always Now

Poetry. Rebecca Starks's TIME IS ALWAYS NOW unfolds against a backdrop of nature, often permeated in unexpected ways with the human dynamics of family, neighborhood, and nation. Her poems convey the urgency within moments of transformation--whether seasonal, as in wilderness and garden; physical, as in the trajectory of youth, aging, and death; or political, as in the challenges of misgovernance and the environmental exigencies of our time. This finalist in the Able Muse Book Award is a finely wrought, thought-provoking collection.Drawing from sources as wide-ranging as Emily Dickinson, Apocalypse Now, fairy tales, and social media, Rebecca Starks's TIME IS ALWAYS NOW deftly balances intelligence and pathos, resisting easy dichotomies and judgments. As these fine poems insist, the present is relentless, and we are immersed: 'No, not out of time; helplessly in it.' Ours is a country of guns; ours is a 'middle-aged earth' in decline--and yet, we are here, witnessing, questioning. I am