Exiles Among You

Kimberly Fahner is the author of You Must Imagine the Cold Here.

The unsettling sense of exile that pervades this stunning collection of
poems speaks to the necessary growth and evolution of the self in a
constantly shifting world. Gunnars roots her poetry in organic and
seasonal imagery so that, even when the reader feels the speaker’s
unease at broken connections, there is a peace in knowing that the self
can be triumphantly defined.

The poems chronicle a journey into the heart of the self. For “who is
to say? which direction is north / or east or where we may go / when we
leave home, or what tidal currents / lodged in the oceans of eternity /
pull us out into the breaking seas.” There may be sea changes in
people, and in the fabric of their lives, but the one element that
remains constant is the inner core of the self or the spirit. With
time’s passage, the poet becomes “used to the space that defines me
/ to myself.”

Poets and writers in Gunnars’s work shape themselves on “cliffs /
of absolution,” with “every word jumping into the unknown.” This
leap of blind creative faith separates the poet from society, but at the
same time it ensures the survival of wonder and passion.

In these wonderfully evocative and crisp poems, Gunnars reminds us that
poetry opens doors of perception into ourselves.