Epiphanic and rich with striking imagery, Anita Skeen’s new collection of poetry documents the fragmentary nature of life and celebrates the desire to make a meaningful narrative from momentary experience. In Never the Whole Story, the past is never past, and the present comes filled with the miracle of small gestures—singular moments that have the power to transport the mind from one geographic place to the next, one emotional world to another. Memory is incomplete, events unfold from multiple perspectives, and secrets unspool from the ordinary. Following in the tradition of James Wright, Maxine Kumin, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Robert Hass, and other writers whose work is grounded in the detail of ordinary life, Never the Whole Story will be a welcome addition to the libraries of those who turn to literature to find deeper connections between their own lives and the natural world.

The Resurrection of the Animals explores the trinity of the natural world, the humans adrift in it, and the animals that accompany them. Although each of the five sections centers on a particular theme, motifs of change, loss, cycles, and transformation thread through the collection, weaving the parts into a unified whole. Individual sections focus on: the seasons of the year, and by extension, people’s lives; the power of memory and its limitations; the theory that what is magical often resides within; and, the mysteries of love. The Resurrection of the Animals culminates in the title section, revealing the lessons of kinship with animals and how epiphanies occur in the simplest actions—taking a walk with dogs or catching sight of a bird on the wing. These poems suggest that memory, association, and interaction with the tangible world can revive a part of the self that has slipped below the depths of consciousness.

In an age of experts and individualism, metrics and competition, The Unauthorized Audubon is something of an anachronism. In fact, its creators, printmaker Laura B. DeLind and poet Anita Skeen, never set out to produce a book at all when they began exchanging prints and poems, but something happened along the way. As they began to appreciate at a deeper level the skill involved in each other’s work, they began to find meaning in small things—a pattern, a memory, a carefully chosen word. In his essay “Plugging into Essential Sources,” Eric Booth introduces the concept of “response-ability.” He describes it as the capacity to connect with the artful work of another. It represents both our need and our promise to respond in an open, eager, and multi-sensual way to a world of possibility. Without this capacity we are crippled in our ability to imagine and to grow. This book is all about response-ability as experienced by the two artists and the visitors to an exhibit of their work at the Michigan State University Museum. This concept and activity animates the twenty-two bird-like spirits found herein, reminding us that there are other such spirits hovering expectantly just beyond the pages, simply waiting for the imagining.