Kairos

by Libby Maxey

Winner of the 2018 New Women's Voices Series

Kairos, Libby Maxey’s first poetry collection, speaks both to the passage of time and to the timelessness of being. The epistolary quality of the sonnet form is front and center, insisting on connection, even as the poems suggest that the mysteries of the past have nothing on the mysteries of our personal present and the people we love. Kairos makes family out of history, gleaning a rich and mythic past from literature and place to structure, interpret, and communicate the present. Whether capturing the explosive intimacy of parenthood or the shortcomings of faith, Maxey's verses order chaos with metaphor. Kairos takes us from New England to the Washington coast to Japan, gathering in what breaks apart. Rooted in the natural world and blooming with music, these luminous poems have won the Poet's Seat Poetry Contest, the Robert P. Collén Poetry Contest, and the New Women's Voices prize from Finishing Line Press.

40 pages, Paperback

First published June 16, 2019

About the author

Libby Maxey has a BA in English from Whitman College and an MA in medieval studies from Cornell University. She is a senior editor with the online journal Literary Mama, where she has been on staff since 2012. Her poems have appeared in Emrys, Mezzo Cammin, Crannóg, The Maynard, and elsewhere. Kairos, her first chapbook, won the 2018 New Women’s Voices contest at Finishing Line Press. She has also won the Princemere Poetry Prize (2021) and the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest (2023), and has been awarded a Laureate's Prize in the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest (2023). Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire, mothering sons, and administering the Department of Classics at Amherst College.

Reviews

[Daniel Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclosure: the author is a friend and fellow medievalist from Cornell. (Also FYI, she is decidedly NOT a member of the Church of Yahweh or a tarot mystic, despite what GoodReads's author profile would have you believe -- that is an entirely different Libby Maxey.)

I devoured all these beautiful poems in one sitting at first, then spent the next couple of weeks re-reading one per evening before bed. Each of them is a smart, shimmering jewel that resonated in different ways; many of them sent me scrambling for a dictionary to look up words I was embarrassed not to know and then thrilled/grateful to discover. In an age where vapid stream-of-consciousness Instagram haiku is what passes for poetry, what a delight it is to revel in language like Libby's. More, please.

[Leah Maines · Rating 5 out of 5]

I selected this book as the Winner of the 2018 New Women's Voices Series.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libby Maxey is an exceptional poet, and this lovely book of poems is enchanting. Like I do with many poems, I read these aloud, reveling in specific words and punctuation, choices that seem so effortless in Maxey's hands. I'm looking forward to more stunning work from this author.

[Melissa Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just wow. This is a stunning and beautiful collection of extremely well-crafted poetry.