"Hope,’ said Dickinson, 'is the thing with feathers.' Patty Crane’s sequence seeks to embody this assertion, and follows in the tradition of grandly inquisitive lyric explorations such as Ammons' 'Corson’s Inlet' and Williams' 'Spring and All.' Crane fixes a steady gaze on the shifting and too-often inscrutable patterns of the natural world—and always with the goal of transforming description into revelation. This is lyric poetry of the highest order, work of inscape and insight, work that dazzles and instructs."

—David Wojahn, author of For the Scribe

Excerpt from something flown

flock

A flock of snow flies up
                   in a vortex of light
and the eye says
                                tiny white moths

        Yes: the invisible rides on the back
          of the visible           and this day
                                          is struck with itself

Even the long aches of shadows shine out
                                           as they reach
                 to be not shadow anymore       but tree:
                                                                      tree tree    tree

   A bird on the feeder
                            a world upside down:
                                                  ɥɔʇɐɥʇnu

     Blink             and the bird
          never left
                                             here then gone
                                                then here again

        When I close my eyes
              the world         stands still

          I am the blink