by Diane Jarvenpa

“An uncanny northern magic flows from the pages of The Tender Wild Things, at once earthy, celestial, and deeply mythic. Diane Jarvenpa’s book is, to quote one of her poems, “a giant humidor of words and images.” Ah, but what words, what images! These wonderful poems, musical to their core, drive unerringly toward the higher intensities of incantation and spell.” -Thomas R. Smith, author of Waking Before Dawn

“From the first lines of The Tender Wild Things, you’ll know you’re in the hands of a master chanteuse and poet. Among the most magnificent of these poems about family and place are those written to the mother, whose bonds to the poet are made of light and song, tradition and language. That the women share a Finnish heritage, that their paths often led through woods, gives the poems flavor and a particularity; that they sing from the heart makes the poems into the “small planets” we all live on. Reading… Wild Things is experiencing that sweet delight in finding another book to fall in love with.” -Sharon Chmielarz, The Rhubarb King

“Our human hungers for motion, knowledge, connection, and art are revealed as necessary and inevitable through the precision of a biologist’s careful observation rendered in the stunning language and virtuosic metaphor of a consummate poet… This is a wonderful book and a gorgeous journey not to be missed.” -Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of Year of the Snake