A friend pointed me to a blog post I'm profoundly glad to have read: The first four ED sonnets, a quartet of sonnets written by Susan Palwick about hospital chaplaincy work. If you enjoy formal poetry -- and especially if you have any connection with chaplaincy work, or its cousins social work, counseling, and medicine -- don't miss these.

The second sonnet in particular, "Emergency Trauma Family Consult Room," really moves me. The enjambment between the first two lines pulls me forward, right into the heart of the poem. As I read, I can feel everything in it unfolding around me.

The poems in chaplainbook, aside from one haiku series, are free verse. It's fascinating to me how Palwick's chaplaincy poems feel at once very unlike, and very like, my own. Anyway, I'm delighted to have found another blogging poet chaplain, and look forward to reading more of her work, in its various genres.

(I imagine most of you already know about chaplainbook, but just in case you don't: here's a link to the chaplainbook story, my post about how the collection came to be, and here's Tom Montag's tremendously generous review of the collection. You are, of course, welcome to purchase copies at any time -- I'm honored and delighted every time someone decides to pick the collection up.)

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