{"product_id":"closer-9781963110258","title":"Closer","description":"\u003cp\u003eMelinda Clemmons' writing has appeared in One Art, Rust \u0026amp; Moth, Midwest Review, Shrew, West Trestle Review, The Imprint, and elsewhere. Closer is her first poetry collection. She was a finalist for the 2025 Richard-Gabriel Rummonds Poetry Prize from Ex Ophidia Press as well as the Wandering Aengus Press Book Award. With an earlier version of this manuscript, she was a finalist for the Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and a semi-finalist for both the Word Works Washington Prize and the Red Mountain Press Discovery Award. Melinda grew up in Southern Illinois, and now lives in Oakland, California, where she works as a freelance writer for nonprofits.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMelinda Clemmons'Closer is a luminous catalog of wonder, a\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ecollection attuned to the quiet ways revelation enters our lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough small gestures and motel pools, young love and graveyard serenades\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eat dusk, these poems illuminate the significance of what we might otherwise\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eoverlook. With the expansive longing of youth and the hard-earned wisdom\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof experience, Clemmons guides readers toward a deeper attentiveness to the\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eworld around them. These poems invite us to \"drive mapless and listen,\" to trust\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe heart's instincts, linger in the moments that shape a life, and \"let the sacred fill\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e[us] still.\" Tender, wise, and deeply human, Closer is a collection readers will return\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eto again and again, discovering new beauty in the fleeting details that make us\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ewho we are. -Kelly Grace Thomas, author of Future Tense\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn Closer, Melinda Clemmons turns attention into a form of\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003edevotion. The dead and the disappearing haunt these poems - a neighbor\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elosing herself to dementia, a father naming his children a﬎er a near-miss on a\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003edark road-and so does the question of what we are le﬎ holding when they go.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLaced with marriages and their undoings, with daughters growing up and away, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eshe moves between the grand and the granular, always pressing toward what\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003elasts, always asking what remains when love changes shape. \"What can I do but\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ego on, wanting what I loved to last,\" she writes-and that is exactly it: the ache\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eof impermanence, and the stubborn insistence on presence anyway. Closer is\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ea collection that stays with you the way the best memories do: without asking\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003epermission. -Tracey Knapp, author of Swerve\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this moving book, Melinda Clemmons describes, and then\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003etests, boundaries. There are physical boundaries-roads at the edge of\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003etown, haloes of motel light, state lines, shorelines-and less physical ones-belief, \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003emarriage, friendship, memory, parenthood. But the speaker of these poems\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003enever breaks or questions a barrier just to see what will happen; it is always with\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ethe hope of returning back to a discernible center, somehow changed and made\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ebetter. In a crisp, earnest and lyrical free verse, Clemmons writes the world as she\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003esees it-full of pain, shadows, regret, loss and distance, certainly, but also always\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003efull of intimacy, light, relief and love. -Nathaniel Perry, author of Long Rules\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Melinda Clemmons\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Pine Row Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/29\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 82\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.27lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.20d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781963110258","brand":"Pine Row Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48460541657225,"sku":"9781963110258","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_2818d118-57a6-4629-bc5a-fe0c2252edbc.jpg?v=1790664503","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/closer-9781963110258","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}