A Forest Almost

Countryman - Covers 1 - 3 (1)-1(published by Subito Press)

Praise for A Forest Almost

Liz Countryman makes a charming sort of grace out of soul-searching—one part bemused, one part anxious, one part mischievous. To fall for such charm is to admit once and for all that only music will save us. I admit it. I love how fiercely this book believes in what is most private about us, our imaginations, and how it uses its musical power to transmit energy outward. That energy is so very strong, but capable too of the oddest, most bittersweet vulnerability at times. It moves, and moves, and moves.

—David Rivard

In Countryman’s stark, startlingly direct objectivity, every clarity crumbles before our eyes into increasingly subjective approximation… It is, I think, Countryman’s canny, contentious, richly idiosyncratic diction that lures me further and further into the “almost” that I realize indeed is a forest surrounding me. This realization, disruptively difficult as it is to swallow, has given me a new kind of nourishment that I hadn’t realized I’ve been so very hungry for.

—Rusty Morrison

It’s not juxtaposition that’s structuring things so much as sequences of the perceiving mind minutely shifting, leading us gradually toward feeling more fully what it is to be sentient… These poems are brave. They make us brave.

—Elizabeth Arnold

Countryman’s fantastic sense of pace matches the way that modern bodies are moving ostensibly untouched (except for legions of poisons crossing each placenta & in our water; except for car accidents; except for bullets; except for, I mean, everything, everything) through time.

—Darcie Dennigan, Full Stop

One of the few books I’ve read in some time that has caused me to jolt, and go back, rereading what had struck in such unexpected ways… Moving between meditation and observation, these short essay-poems are breathtakingly, concurrently, intimate and objective, articulating such a clarity and precision to get even indirectly to the point.

—Rob McLennan, Rob McLennan’s Blog