Difficult Gifts: Poems

by Cathy Warner

In language that pays close attention to both sound and sentiment, Cathy Warner draws from daily life, the pandemic, childhood, and creativity as she lays bare not only the difficulties and distractions of being human, but her belief in poetry, beauty, and a higher power to sustain us. The result is a spirited and even humorous collection that offers hope amid hardship. In Warner’s words, our task is “nothing more than practicing again and again the art of embracing life’s difficult gifts.”

This is a remarkable collection by a poet who asks us all to consider what this journey we call “life” means, and more importantly, how to show up every day with thanks for all that is fleeting and fragile.
–Carey Taylor, author of The Lure of Impermanence


From her exquisitely detailed personifications of the natural world to the laying bare of her vulnerabilities (which are also ours), to the way in which she transcends the daily by transforming it into something holy, Warner will make you laugh, cry, think, and wax nostalgic—sometimes all at the same time.
–Sue Magrath, author of The Salvation of A Novel

173 pages, Paperback

Published March 28, 2023

About the author

Cathy Warner is author of three books of poetry: Difficult Gifts, Home By Another Road, and Burnt Offerings. She is also editor of the anthologies: Poemographs for Peace, Poemographs, and Viral Verse: Poetry of the Pandemic. Her fiction, memoir, and essays have appeared in Under the Sun, The Other Journal, So To Speak, Water~Stone, and the blogs of Ruminate, Relief, and Image, among others. Recipient of the Steinbeck and SuRaa fiction awards, Cathy has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. She writes, teaches, edits, and renovates homes, in Western Washington. Find her at cathywarner.com.

Reviews

[John S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gifts—who doesn’t love presents now and then? Cathy Warner’s new collection of verse, Difficult Gifts, examines life’s offerings with a voice of experience welcoming shadows of innocence. Whether secular or spiritual, her poems run the gambit of from pastoral landscapes to childhood reflections, loss and gain to cosmic observances, disguised blessings to pain and acceptance. Attentive and inquisitive, analytical but fun, visual and compelling, Cathy guides her readers through each thematic section of her collection with exuberance measured zeal. Mixing forms appropriate to contend, readers travel with her to “Saint Vincent De Paul Thrift Store,” wander the stratosphere in “Sestina in the Clouds,” “Blinded by Blue Light,” and “The Perseids Meteor Shower August 1993,” share in social quests in “The March on Belfair,” observe family ethos and pathos at work in “The Easter Before My Father Left Us” and “Pieces.” Difficult Gifts deftly touches upon the multiple faces of humanity in good times and bad—gifting poems that will read and appreciated time and again by diverse audiences. Flip through one page and be drawn to the next. Enjoy!

[Emily Jensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely poems! Some landed in the five star range for me, some in three. Overall, loved the themes at work here.