| In All This As I Stand By, her fifth collection, Carolyne Van Der Meer explores the unimportant, the everyday, the avoided, the forgotten. She weaves together details that lurk beneath the surface, the things we don’t notice or refuse to name, and creates a new understanding. Her lens captures an alternate way of looking at cobwebs, textured paint, porch swings, rock formations, roadkill, illness, abuse and loss.
“In her fifth book, All This As I Stand By, Carolyne Van Der Meer affirms her continuing interest in the salience of place, the complicated nature of human relationships, connections to animals, linkages of illness to creativity, and the role of spirituality in a fraught physical world. Van Der Meer writes of life experiences and social issues with a keen and compassionate observational eye. She is capable of narrative grace, metaphorical surprise, and insights toward which every writer strives — both startling and assuaging. She recognizes in these poems that ‘there are infinite ways to disrupt order’ and attends to ‘new patterns emerging’.” —Elana Wolff |
Abrams Books
