Thunderbirds, Poems by Christine Penko

The thunder of wisdom, the flight of music, the sharp strike of insight: these are the virtues of Christine Penko's Thunderbirds.

Sample Poems by Christine Penko

"Christine Penko's Thunderbirds gives us what we expect to find in good poetry: inventive craft, subject, music, and imagination. Moreover, there are compelling lyric insights and clear narrative progressions in poems both accessible and meaningful--qualities too often absent in much new poetry. Most importantly, Penko manages to transform the quotidian, the domestic and dramatic, into greater human understanding. The thinking of Heraclitus has been absorbed and re-worked throughout the book and this provides gravity, an engaging and original vision." --Christopher Buckley

"Reading Christine Penko's first volume of poetry, you want to thank the gods that poets like her exist to bring meaning to our fractured lives. She writes with a tragedian's touch, but arrives at redemption pondering fire, flood, family reunions, an affair, a son in and out of rehab, raising her granddaughter, and the 'dark haired' pregnant girl. . . to arrive at the truth of 'a family standing together.' Though she has a 'fondness for imperfection' her poems are otherwise, written with deft craft and surprise after surprise." --Perie Longo, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Emerita

"'I've a fondness for imperfection' Christine Penko writes in her new book, and that's something of an understatement. Thunderbirds is shot through with despair, longing and disappointment, yet the vibrancy of the language and the particularity of each carefully chosen detail make this an invigorating read. First books rarely compel us from page to page, but Thunderbirds is different--each poem is as sharp as the point of a needle on which thousands of angels dance."--David Starkey, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Emeritus

ISBN-13: 978-1625491206, 90 pages

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