Kay Bosgraaf

The Fence Lesson Kay Bosgraaf

Kay Bosgraaf is a poet of unstinting and nearly comprehensive noticing. She brings a painter's eye, a musician's ear, and a rare talent for lucidity. Often her business is outwardly modest, to consecrate an instant, but she imagines so precisely and she writes so well that I am always engaged, whether in the rural scenes of "The Fence Lesson" or the between-cities landscape of "After Six Weeks." She is a poet of range, of places, but, also, of people. Again and again, she surprises, sometimes with wit, sometimes with seriousness. Most impressively, she never hides, and if she shows us beauty, she also writes " of the wretched in the hateful world/ the mutilation, the wounds." Deeply owned, completely honest, The Fence Lesson is a terrific read.

Rodney Jones, Poet

Kay Bosgraaf's The Fence Lesson is a very satisfying book. Part of that satisfaction is in the skillful, deft ways she uses language to give the reader a clear sense of her ideas and feelings. With her choice of subjects and her willingness to address them with a hard, but warm honesty, I come away from this book with a sense of delicacy and solidness.

Lou Lipsitz, Poet, Psychotherapist

In The Fence Lesson Kay Bosgraaf gives us the ongoing rush of a family story from vividly rendered childhood recollections of the grandparents' farm through love and motherhood to her mother's decline into dementia, finishing up with an almost whimsical portrait of the "old guys, grinning because they outsmarted life." Each poem offers a clear and memorable moment.

Penelope Schott, Poet

Kay Bosgraaf's new poetry book is mature, historical, and emotionally complex. It partakes of the dark laughter of the rugged adult who knows she/he will be cut down over and over by forces and ill-luck but refuses to give in. Many of the poems are spoken and seen through the child's grasping to understand adults. Learning how not to be crushed. How even in the face of adult failure, anger, and pain, refusing to give up. The qualities of trust in life make it easy to read.

Kay Divant, Poet, Writer, Artist