Beyond Chittering Cottage: Poems of Place

Did you know that an orb weaver spider "eats" her web? Or that Smilax thorns come from a series of tumorous rhizomes connected underground? Rachel S. Donahue didn't either, until she started paying attention. After living the nomadic life of an overseas worker, Rachel found herself settled on one plot of land for more than five years with ample time for observation.

These poems reveal what she's seen beyond the spiders, birds, and vines—the deeper struggles and shimmering mystery of life on this corner of the earth.

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Editorial Reviews:

“The best poetry helps us see and hear that which we might otherwise take for granted or fail to notice. Rachel Donahue's poetry helps us appreciate ordinary, domestic life for what it is: magical, meaningful, and anything but mundane. These lyrics are deceptively simple. This means they are welcoming as open doors, but they are not simplistic. They are more like a house with many rooms and this collection is worth the slow wandering of reading and re-reading. Rachel writes the glory of her ordinary life so that we can better see our own.”

–Christie Purifoy, author of Roots and Sky and Placemaker

“Rachel S. Donahue's verse is uniquely keen-eyed, at once incisive and warm. Her subjects (everything from orb weavers to hummingbirds to silver buckles) are imbued with personality and humor. She urges us to see the wonder and beauty of the spaces and people close to us, even and especially in the face of their brokenness—to love them, and to love them well. Every line aches with the longing for wholeness and Home. Every line rings as an urgent call to creative cultivation of ‘this garden we share.’ And every line breathes out light and hope. If any of that sounds like something you need in your life, you'll love this book.”

–Chris Wheeler, poet, author of SOLACE: poems for the broken season