Must Be Present to Win
Meg Withers
$13.95
0977803473

About the Author: Meg Withers lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with Rich and the feline family, Ooshi, Fred-O, and The Whizzer. An MFA candidate at San Francisco State, she is an ardent advocate of the integration of the arts and sciences, what she considers an interesting form of deep ecumenism.

Blurbs: “‘We know who is at the door,’ and if we are brave enough in these moments we will invite them in, with all their differences. The “they” I refer to is the rarest of poems that dares to cross into life. “A key is placed into the heart of the world/as we speak the universe into existence.” Meg Withers’ collection does just that. These are poems of astonishing clarity, extending themselves into a world so often hidden in the deception of words. Simply put, this is a book that dares to be romantic, and hopeful, and beautiful.”— Truong Tran, author of Within the Margin

“Meg Withers’ first full-length collection reveals a poet in full possession of her powers: teasing, instructing even chastising her readers to wake up to celebrate and mourn our “sweet, sagging world.” She provides the lexicon for both registers of feeling. Her poems are filled with “sweet wise motion,” “inner ear language,” “vertical illusion[s] of power,” and “horizontal connections.” A mature talent, her assured voice forgives all but “a
failure to love.” —Maxine Chernoff, head of the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University and author of Some of Her Friends That Year: New and Selected Stories

“Must Be Present to Win is so charged with life that it even takes its Zen in large bites, reminding us that “truth is / never visible / from one perspective.” This is poetry of lush entrances and stark departures, and because the author is passionate and open, she writes beautifully and authentically about love. There’s a sense that her words, like Persephone, come out of the earth “hot-blooded, / guttural, / sublime” and always in celebration of the fullness of experience. Even the unique titles of the book’s sections suggest life’s rich layering and simultaneity; that the loss of our dearest friends is also part of the “heart’s green, immaculate hunger;” that “we are bees, who honey in our hive.”— Paul Hoover, editor of the literary magazine New American Writing and the anthology Postmodern American Poetry; author of the forthcoming essay collection Fables of Representation