Until Fall

In Margaret Koger's collection Until Fall, we are transported to a world of nature that is both cruel and beautiful. With deft language, Koger writes of birds, flowers - morning glory, roses, lilacs, dandelions. She writes of the pandemic and of how a spring storm carries away the birds she looked forward to feeding. Her tender care for nature is evident in every poem, and the long-armed poem about rain shows us how close pleasure and pain are, how fickle nature is, but still, she would like to toss a bucket of moonlight onto "a million silver slides and run / to see it sail." A must-read for those who enjoy pastoral poetry, for those who want to taste the rain, tend to blossoms, and fly with her through sensory and beautiful verse. -Kika Dorsey, Good AshMargaret Koger's new book of poems says: "Only poetry / (never) lies." A pun, of sorts, that points to the soft commentary in these lyric poems, prose poems, haibun, haiku. Yes words, soft, but loud and poignant; a stiletto and a chamois cloth. Poems about astronomy and nature and ecological holocaust, "[c]at's ear and catmint," birds sailing from "limb to sinuous limb," a "moon that never frowns." Vibrant, visual, sensual. -Ken Rodgers, Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor, and I Married the WarMargaret Koger offers a true collage-like collection curated across time, the elements, and our human condition. Poem by poem, Koger gifts a deep interrogation, seeking the "I-and-Thou" moments in life's small notes - the scales on a snake, the blink of a bird, the stirring shoots awaiting Spring. These tiny minutes take away our breath, our worries. She unfolds the whispers and wisdom that flowers and foliage carry, reminders to keep thriving, despite the knowing that eventually "frost kills all." This collection is both a guide and inspiration, a reminder to hold true to earth's knowledge and apply the quiet connection of all - each of us - one to another. -Rebecca Evans, Tangled by Blood, Safe Handling, and After Burn