Among the many striking rewards of Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s Forking the Swift is being led into the startling realization that everything is a wilderness. She leaves us alone and lost with no guide except the poem. When we stumble out from her work, we wonder how we survived and we learn that survival means changing into something new. Notice how she makes form evoke and embody what the language explores. This is artistry that matters and means. These poems put the lie to one ever again saying, “Seen that. Done that.” Steinorth brings us back to the enigmatic wonder of it ALL. — Jack Ridl, author of Broken Symmetry and Losing Season In a world where language may be as homogenized as milk or as pretentious as Jello colors, Jen Sperry Steinorth’s poems offer the essential-ness that a long look at a clear night sky will give you. She is as attentive to sound as a jazz trumpeter is, “Those Triassic Calamites out a coal mine in Tasmania…,” letting the mutes and sibilants move in and out of a poem like fireflies, but she’s also as grounded and authentic as a good drummer: climbing oil rigs, going for smokes, and yes, what about that black dress? Her poems range wide in refreshing content and format, strung with phone calls from the electrician and wrestling bears. They are permeated with quiet wit about human and wild nature—think of “Thirteen Ways to Kill Starlings.” Without sentiment or cliché, Jen brings us what we love in poetry, the song of shaped sounds rivering through shaped meaning—“suck the marrow/the morrow.” Michigan Writers is proud to introduce this dynamic work not just to lovers of poetry, but to all of us who long for a clear eye to show us the what shines in the dark. — Anne-Marie Oomen, author of the poetry collection, Un-Coded Woman , An American Map: Essays , and other books My Girl, Lay Down Your Burden.My girl Christie says, "what if we was as small as these ants?Those rocks ain't much bigger than my double D's and they'd be like mountains." Oh yeah, those days never wore panties,trumped up cowboy boots or nothing at all-- leant back on the hoodof the truck and napped for days.  Those days had ways.The steep slide from the shoulder where we parkedthe pick-up. The gravel passage down deep in the ravine.Everything green. August. Wednesday.  Doubled over elmacross the tread where I cracked my head.  Christie saysmaybe I got a concussion.  Got a summit cross my brow.Christie says I'm a goddess.  She's a goddess.  Or a queen.Or a sylph.  Yeah, we're sylphish.Watch us climb the boulders naked and dance for our man.Watch us swim the quick aqua like black water snakes,lie on the hot stone, wet and shimmering.  See her cupsof summer slick, moss and soft along the creek, my kneeslike stony islands forking the swift--we set the world adrift.We skim the tall, gorge wall like goats, skirt the mountains with the creek.  Christie's a siren singing down the sun.I'm casting the moon to its moody blue.  We hewn of silver,amber, plum. We joy and glum.  Christie pinch an ant outthe stones of rubble bed, says "what if we was as small as this?"Aw, sweet girl, don't you know, we is.              Michigan Writers Cooperative PressTraverse City, Michigan, 2010 Jennifer Sperry Steinorth is a poet, educator, interdisciplinary artist and licensed builder.  Her poetry has appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Colorado Review, The Journal, Jubilat, Michigan Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Quarterly West, and elsewhere.  She has received grants from the Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Warren Wilson College where she received an MFA in poetry and Bear River Writers Conference.  She was a Writers@Work Fellow selected by Tarfia Faizzulah and won the Connecticut River Review Poetry Prize judged by Penelope Pellizon.  A chapbook, Forking the Swift, was published in 2010.  Her first full-length book, A Wake with Nine Shades, a finalist for the Hillary Gravendyke Prize, the Barrow Street Prize and the 53 Press open read, is forthcoming from Texas Review Press in fall of 2019.  A hybrid text of visual poetry/erasure is forthcoming from TRP Spring of 2021.