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We takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor, how we are shaped by and create our nation by how we see ourselves and others.
The poems investigate what unites us; how the personal is political, and the political is personal; changing our perceptions to heal families, friendships, and country of incivility and villainization by practicing greater compassion; trying to see past egos to souls, as “We” suggests in conversation with Whitman: “I celebrate my being, every atom/of myself and you, lamp and mirror/of all that is”; in a new Preamble to the Constitution; and in the feminist “Peace Hymn for the Republic.” We begins with a non-partisan vision of soul, and ends driving a rural road at dawn in “State of the Union Aubade,” both paeans to our common divinity.
“In her latest book, We, poet and citizen April Ossmann successfully invokes Whitman, encouraging the reader to remember and rise to America’s potential in the promise of equanimity. Ossmann too can 'hear America singing' together. From her own shared garden to the Edenic, Ossmann does not fear the scale of her observations. Ossmann notes the transcendent and harrowing lessons of history, as well as the 'fuzzy bobbing/and weaving' of a bumblebee upon a petal. Hers is a broad view grounded in the intimacy of presence in each moment. This is a brave and tender summons toward union in a disunified time. As she writes in 'Peace Hymn for the Republic,' 'Glory be in civility! / Her truth is teaching us.'””
—Vievee Francis, author of The Shared World
“The poems in April Ossmann’s latest collection, We, explore the painful divisions within the body politic in equal measure to the intimate interior of the self. These verses are as formally inventive as they are steeped in tradition, with each word chiseled deft and sure—as Ossmann’s signature clarity is on full display throughout. There are anthems in these pages, as well as portraits of the human heart laid bare. Indeed, We offers a clear-eyed vision of the world we live in, and it does so with such a capacious heart, such tenderness, one cannot help but think of it as a necessary and restorative medicine.””
—Brian Turner, author of The Wild Delight of Wild Things
April Ossmann is the author of Event Boundaries (awarded a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and a Vermont Book Award finalist) and Anxious Music—both from Four Way Books—and has published poetry widely in journals and anthologies. A former executive director of Alice James Books, she owns a poetry consulting business (www.aprilossmann.com) offering manuscript editing, publishing advice, tutorials, and workshops, and taught at the low-residency MFA in the Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College. She lives in White River Junction, Vermont.