Nothing Is Stationary - Paperback

by Joanne Esser (Author)

A poetic meditation on impermanence--biological, emotional, and spiritual.

The poems in Joanne Esser's Nothing Is Stationary proclaim, sometimes reluctantly, that change is a biological constant, an emotional condition, and a spiritual conundrum. Even as they reflect on the past and live fully in the present, Esser's words leave room for things still taking shape--like how moving water shapes stone, how a great tree's shadow shifts across the grass almost imperceptibly over the course of minutes, hours, a whole day. These poems observe the tilted, spinning planet and all the things, the animals, the people--dear ones and strangers--that hold onto it. And they glimpse the self as it watches itself weather, age. Even as unstable as this world can be, when the poet pays attention, life keeps offering what is needed.

Author Biography

Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections All We Can Do Is Name Them, (Fernwood Press, October 2024), Humming at the Dinner Table, (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning (2012). Recent work appears in Great Lakes Review, Humana Obscura, I-70 Review, Dunes Review, The Main Street Rag, and Orca, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years. She is in her last year of serving as the
director and art studio teacher at All Seasons Preschool of Eagan, an intergenerational nature-based early childhood center. She lives with her husband in Eagan, Minnesota.