Night Beyond Black

"Night Beyond Black pushes through the limits of the given—color, light, natural world, experience—to question what lies beyond with level-headed intelligence and, always, kindness. Edstrom's language is devoid of pretension yet elegant and precise, like the inside of a beehive. She shares with Stanley Kunitz a way of perception that is equal measures playfulness and gravitas, rooted on the soil around them, open-canopied. Almost hidden by the beauty of these poems, there is a small history of the American West of small farmers and quiet small-town folk—their love of nature and their decency passed on to the poet, and from her to her descendants. Having been ‘recommended to poetry’ perhaps later than she would have liked, Edstrom delivers a full-length collection unrushed, mature, and as resplendent as the sea light she so loves." ~ Lorraine Healy, author of The Habit of Buenos Aires and Abraham’s Voices "Suffused with Nature’s palette, the aptly titled Night Beyond Black is a delicately nuanced poetic exploration of shifting darks and lights, sometimes as interpreted by visual artists (édouard Manet) , other writers (Richard Wilbur) and always originating from her inner impulses. From Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night where the light makes darkness ‘bearable’ to romance’s ‘eating the bread of love’ in ‘flickering sunlight,’ Edstrom showers light infused with her reflections of familial love as the ‘least expected’ granddaughter’s pressing against the window at dawn catching ‘the glitter of the world,’ leaves her equally spellbound. With this contemporary re-picturing of the Romantic sensibility, Edstrom’s Night Beyond Black enriches us all." ~Whitney Scott, TallGrass Writers Guild President and member of the Society of Midland Authors "The poems of Night Beyond Black ‘dip below the surface of a life, go deep’ to explore a world where ‘silence sings’ and ‘a flock of birds turns / flashing a dark underside.’ Through wilderness, grief, and undulating fields of wheat, Edstrom leads, along paths of insight and wild violets. Hers are words we will savor, experience like the soft tap of the honey bee brushing our lips, knowing ‘something necessary (will) emerge.'" ~Ronda Broatch, author of Lake of Fallen Constellations