Leah Maines, Senior Editor of Finishing Line Press, nominated Stepping Through Moons for the California Book Award, the PEN USA Literary Award, and the Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s 2010 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award.
The poem “Once Again” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. ”Once Again” first appeared in POEM.
“Each poem in Stepping Through Moons begins in the familiar, but numinous world of bees and birthday parties, laundry and scrub jays. Then mysteriously, the poem’s boundaries merge into myth and memory: the brother by the lake’s edge becomes Narcissus; the sound of broken glass triggers the memory of a gunshot; the wing beats of towhees echo our own longing to transcend the gray palette of human devastation.
Wilkes’s poems acknowledge the most timeless patterns inflected through “the briefest slivers of time,” with an attention to language and metaphor that is radiant and fierce in its precision.”
—Terry Ehret, author of Lucky Break
“Toni Wilkes writes with a clear vision of reality yet with an astonishing warmth and tenderness toward the sinners as well as toward the saints in life. She is skilled at probing the depths of human experience without letting herself be defeated by the darkness she finds there.”
—Susan Terris, author of Contrariwise
“Rich in detail and imagination, Wilkes writes with assurance and skill. Her rhythms, scenes and philosophies invite us to enter and fully appreciate these poems.”
—C B Follett, author of At the Turning of the Light
Limited Edition. Contact Toni.L.Wilkes@gmail.com to purchase your copy.
© Toni L Wilkes, 2008 to 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Toni L Wilkes with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
