Tender the Maker

"e;Again and again in Christina Hutchins s exquisite Tender the Maker, poems startle us into awareness of the overlooked, the nearly always invisible (such as a library s unused dictionary), and the marvelous, those aspects of life that come under the rubric of mystery, in all senses of the word. Hutchins combines a pitch-perfect and precise lyricism with a postmodern sensibility of language s materiality. Cynthia Hogue, judge for the 2015 May Swenson Poetry Award"e;An elegantly crafted, dense work that invites readers to travel on spiritual, philosophical, and historical journeys."e; Kirkus Reviews"e;Tender the Maker revisits the age-old comparison between poet and deity, highlighting its blind spots, namely the times when creating also means losing, destroying, forgetting.? . . . Each poem becomes a map where time and space intersect and unearth connections that help us confront the weight of history, whether our own or that of others."e; Fjords Review "e;[T]hroughout the book, Hutchins guides me into her patient, fragile, complex vision. . . . Both the depth and the precision of Hutchins s work arise from her exact attention to the 'motion-in-relation' of herself as an artist, which is also attention to the tools of her work and to her imagination s duty to honor the seen and the not seen."e; Beloit Poetry JournalThe May Swenson Poetry Award is an annual competition named for May Swenson, one of America s most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in her hometown of Logan, Utah.

"e;Again and again in Christina Hutchins s exquisite Tender the Maker, poems startle us into awareness of the overlooked, the nearly always invisible (such as a library s unused dictionary), and the marvelous, those aspects of life that come under the rubric of mystery, in all senses of the word. Hutchins combines a pitch-perfect and precise lyricism with a postmodern sensibility of language s materiality. Cynthia Hogue, judge for the 2015 May Swenson Poetry Award"e;An elegantly crafted, dense work that invites readers to travel on spiritual, philosophical, and historical journeys."e; Kirkus Reviews"e;Tender the Maker revisits the age-old comparison between poet and deity, highlighting its blind spots, namely the times when creating also means losing, destroying, forgetting.? . . . Each poem becomes a map where time and space intersect and unearth connections that help us confront the weight of history, whether our own or that of others."e; Fjords Review "e;[T]hroughout the book, Hutchins guides me into her patient, fragile, complex vision. . . . Both the depth and the precision of Hutchins s work arise from her exact attention to the 'motion-in-relation' of herself as an artist, which is also attention to the tools of her work and to her imagination s duty to honor the seen and the not seen."e; Beloit Poetry JournalThe May Swenson Poetry Award is an annual competition named for May Swenson, one of America s most provocative and vital writers. During her long career, Swenson was loved and praised by writers from virtually every school of American poetry. She left a legacy of fifty years of writing when she died in 1989. She is buried in her hometown of Logan, Utah.