In Stones for Words, Sara Robinson takes the reader through five distinct levels of an evolutionary journey of her writing and philosophy of life. Like the stratification of the earth's mantle, her personal development is in layers of hard and soft rock, which she must mine for definition and clarity. She is not afraid or reluctant to involve the reader in the intimacy of her thoughts and self-doubts. Using simple, but powerful imagery, mixed with abundant use of metaphor and simile, she presents her observations and attempts at logical conclusions. In some poems there is a sense of inner debate about what is true and what is not; but at the end she either accepts what she sees or leaves the thought for future imagination. As with Sara's first collection of poetry, Two Little Girls in a Wading Pool (Cedar Creek Publishing, 2013), her poetic quest for identity is still influenced by the emotional ties to where and how she grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. SARA M. ROBINSON, founder of the Lonesome Mountain Pros(e) Workshop and instructor of a course on Contemporary Women Poets at UVA-OLLI, is poetry columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and poetry editor for the premier issue of the Virginia Literary Journal. In addition to publication in various anthologies and journals, she is poet and author of Love Always, Hobby and Jessie (2009), Two Little Girls in a Wading Pool (2012), and A Cruise in Rare Waters (2013).

Alaska poems by Sara M. Robinson, founder of the Lonesome Mountain Pros(e) Writers Workshop and poetry columnist for Southern Writers Magazine.

In her poem "Boardwalk," Sara Robinson describes, with her usual visual acuity and meditative suppleness, citizens of her beloved Elkton, Virginia, who are "keepers / of voices who sing of things they are / and things they are not." What is true of her generously imagined townspeople is true of Robinson herself. In this debut volume, she sings of what she is--keen historian of particular people in a particular place, a little girl growing up into visionary adulthood, sympathetic friend and family member, attentive observer of local flora and fauna, both animal and human--and of what she is not, what is not part of her immediate sensory experience but what nevertheless presents itself abundantly to her capable understanding: eruptions of violence, past and present; other landscapes, domestic and foreign; other selfscapes in people she treats with compassionate dignity. Perceptual traveler, efficient narrator, fearless experimenter, Sara Robinson gives us precious treasure here. - STEPHEN CUSHMAN, Robert C. Taylor Professor American Literature, Poetry (Univ. of VA); Author of Poetry Collections: Riffraf (2011), Heart Island (2006), Cussing Lessons (2002), and Blue Pajamas (1998).