Authorized Visitors, Poems by Nancy Jentsch

Authorized Visitors serves up a banquet of lyrical poetry which explores nature's relationship to the human experience, where the plates are heaped with awe, exhilaration, humility, and sometimes even with humor.

Sample Poems by Nancy Jentsch

"Nancy Jentsch's Authorized Visitors is alive with the natural world, vibrating with imagery of all the senses, grounded in place, whether it's the woods, a creek or river, mountains, country roads, a chicken coop, dentist office, a cave in Spain, or a lake in Nicaragua. Her poems speak of beauty, dreams, journeys, metamorphoses, memory, relationships, borders, wars, love and loss, always with a compelling sense of longing, hope, joy, wonder, tenderness, humor, and wit. This is a poet who pays attention to what she sees and feels, and forges underlying, transformational connections between us all. Just like the bird in 'Phoebe's Blessing,' 'heaps my hungry hands / with a bouquet of birdsong / I scatter / across my day,' these poems sing unforgettable tunes that the reader will want to hear again and again.ˮ-Karen George

"Nature is a religion in Nancy Jentsch's Authorized Visitors -sacred sounds, hallowed memories, a bounty of images, and a truly genuine understanding of the threads of vein and stem and root that run through the human and the natural and connect the two worlds, 'the pulses of man and rock.'"―Taunja Thomson

"In this exquisite collection Nancy Jentsch invites us to experience the natural world without boundaries, to follow a higher law, to amble meadows, be attentive to marigolds, cardinals, sparrows, and walk country roads fully tuned to the 'lust-filled trills' of birdsong. What makes this collection so luminous is that we, as readers, become the doe 'who wanted a cool sip / of river water before climbing / the bank to birth a fawn,' ambivalent to property lines and ownership. In these poems, we walk freely from one raspberry bush to the next 'in search / of September's solitary daisy.' Nothing is taken for granted. Even the weeds 'dare to bloom / as a palette peppered with mischief.' This resonating collection is a wanderer's intimate homage to beauty. ˮ-Donelle Dreese

"Nancy Jentsch's debut chapbook, Authorized Visitors, is a fine collection of poems, often deceptively spare in words and always rich in image, sound and wisdom. These poems serve as mirror for the dance between the natural world replete with 'untamed sweetness' and our human world of dental hygienists, 'chicken cams' in the coop, no trespassing signs and borders between countries. 'Are birds overhead/ required to change their love song/ to a call of warning/ on their visaless flight?' asks the title poem. Jentsch traverses these realms with grace and precision. I would add Authorized Visitors to the poet's list of 'What to Pack for the Autumnal Equinox' or indeed for any journey that requires a good book."-Pauletta Hansel

ISBN-13: 978-1625492333, 44 pages, $16

Order from Amazon

Order from Barnes and Noble