“In Bird Missing from One Shoulder, Linda Annas Ferguson has written a poetry collection that movingly renders the beauty and sadness of life’s transience. The poems about her father’s life and death are especially impressive, for they not only depict an individual life but also a way of life now vanished from the Southern landscape.” 

Ron Rash, author of Eureka Mill and Saints at the River

 

Linda Annas Ferguson’s elegiac poems about her father and mother, both of whom worked in textile mills, capture the lives of a dying generation of southern laborers. They came from the farms and hills to the small towns, married and raised their children, and worked loyally at their jobs until the jobs were no more. When her father returns from his last night on the graveyard shift, “white lint clinging to his hair /‘like a disintegrated halo,” we celebrate the unsung heroism of these men and women whom Ferguson depicts with the love of a daughter and the sure hand of a mature poet. 

R.S. Gwynn, author of Dogwatch 

 

Reading Linda Annas Ferguson’s poems is like watching a good documentary. I believe what I see: real images, real memories. And I believe in this poet’s commitment to preserving the truth – however hard or bleak—about her parents’ lives, her personal history. I am moved by the intimacy of these poems.

David Trinidad, author of Plasticville

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The poems of Linda Annas Ferguson are beautifully crafted and deeply moving glimpses into her world. Whether she is describing the hard life of her mother, or the first morning with a new lover, each poem is an exquisite distillation of experience that leaves the reader feeling as though they were there living that moment with her. Last Chance to Be Lost represents a poet at the height of her power.

               Marjory Wentworth, former South Carolina Poet Laureate and author of Noticing Eden

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“Linda Annas Ferguson knows---to borrow Wallace Stevens’ formulation—that ‘Death is the mother of beauty.” She proclaims, “Everything / is drenched with endings, alive with dying.’ Her work exists at the shimmering mid-point between an urge to celebrate the world’s beauty and a pained recognition that this beauty is mutable. As she wryly puts it, she is ‘dying to write/ a decent poem.’ Linda Annas Ferguson has done more than that. She has given us a book of tender, clear-eyed, complex meditations, a lovely book by a poet whose vision we can trust.” 

Chris Forhan, author of Black Leapt In

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“Dirt Sandwich is about love, loss, and, above all, vanishment— ‘an oyster, still silky and iridescent.’ ‘the ocean, never deep enough.’ For me, the book has three touchstones—the title poem, in which a woman whose husband is dying, takes the earth he will become into her own body. ‘Midsummer’s Eve’ in which we see friends between two worlds galloping through the dark woods outside a bonfire’s circle, and the last poem that ends ‘You whisper/ ‘stay,’ to the small of my palm, my cheek, to all I thought was without need’ Three touchstones are more than the law allows, but Linda Annas Ferguson has achieved them, and with her permission, I’ll be carrying them, warm in my pocket, on my own journey.” 

Lola Haskins, author of Solutions Begging with A

 

The moment is dear to us, precisely because it is so fugitive,’ Stanley Kunitz once wrote. “And it is somewhat of a paradox that poets should spend a lifetime hunting for the magic that will make the moment stay.’ With a precision of craft and a tenderness of heart, Linda Annas Ferguson has found a way to make it stay. From Adam’s first meticulous naming, to a stripper’s deliberate moves, to Janice Joplin’s final song, Ferguson guides us through the quotidian world on an undercurrent of holiness. How lucky we are to have this bright and deeply moving collection.

Cathy Smith Bowers, author of The Candle I Hold Up to See You

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“The narrative spell of this book is as strong as that of a good novel, allowing us to enter the life of a Southern cotton-mill family and experience its warmth and difficult struggles head-on. Ferguson’s work is both tender and fearless. Bird Missing from One Sholder contains poems about death, but also the small, happy moments of one family’s day-to-day life. It is sprinkled with surprising and original tidbits. ‘I could smell the boy in you,’ the poet tells us in “First Kiss.”’ 

Patricia Gray, author of Rupture

 

It’s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing contains the wise, tender reflections of a poet willing to probe the past without trying to prettify it. Lind Annas Ferguson keeps her eyes open, her ears tuned to the world. Her subjects are primal ones of parent and child, light and dark, hope and leave-taking—and unequivocally, death. Her deep-felt truths are likely to be found in the smallest detail, from an empty apron pocket to the coat hanging from the nail of the bedroom door. My advice is to read the poems and then read them again—and again. 

Susan Laughter Meyers, author of Lessons in Leaving and Past president of the North Carolina Poetry Society

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Linda Annas Ferguson’s poetry book is one of the most powerful collections I’ve read in years. These poems about love and loss in a southern mill town bruise the heart. She captures the gestures, patterns, care and ultimate loneliness of her parents and other good people who live hard lives. Her voice is so honest, her lines so clean, her insights so original and tough that we can only hope for more of the same. A treasure! 

Dennis Ward Stiles, former President of the South Carolina Poetry Society and author of Saigon Tea

 

 

Linda Ferguson’s work in It’s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing is a rare and wonderful gift to the reader, poems that are quiet, understated, beautiful, that can shake one to the core. 

Phebe Davidson, former Editor, Palanquin Press, and author of Dreameater

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In Last Chance to Be Lost, Linda Annas Ferguson has created a gem in which each facet both mirrors a unique experience of love and allows us to peer deep beneath the shiny surface into the lives that make love real. Her visions are invitations to explore and gain understanding of those formative moments that turn the child toward maturity without giving up the seeds of youth. These are poems about the big issues—love, life, loss, and growth.

Edmund August, former Executive Director, Kentucky Writers’ Coalition

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Through language as unpretentious as it is moving and precise, Linda Anass Ferguson captures the plain, unperfumed warmth of a world she refuses to let slip away. it is a synesthetic world in which sound brushes [the ear] with a cold hand and questions…flow in and out like purple pain. I applaud these poems for their toughness, their tenderness, their exquisite craftsmanship. 

Cathy Smith Bowers, author of Traveling in Time of Danger