We: Poems - Softcover

Ossmann, April

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1636281729 ISBN 13: 9781636281728

Publisher: Red Hen Press, 2025

Synopsis

We takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor, how we are shaped by and create our nation by how we see ourselves and others.

The poems investigate what unites us; how the personal is political, and the political is personal; changing our perceptions to heal families, friendships, and country of incivility and villainization by practicing greater compassion; trying to see past egos to souls, as “We” suggests in conversation with Whitman: “I celebrate my being, every atom/of myself and you, lamp and mirror/of all that is”; in a new Preamble to the Constitution; and in the feminist “Peace Hymn for the Republic.” We begins with a non-partisan vision of soul, and ends driving a rural road at dawn in “State of the Union Aubade,” both paeans to our common divinity.

About this title

About the Author

April Ossmann is the author of Event Boundaries (awarded a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and a Vermont Book Award finalist) and Anxious Music—both from Four Way Books—and has published poetry widely in journals and anthologies. A former executive director of Alice James Books, she owns a poetry consulting business (www.aprilossmann.com) offering manuscript editing, publishing advice, tutorials, and workshops, and taught at the low-residency MFA in the Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College. She lives in White River Junction, Vermont.

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1636281729
• ISBN 13: 9781636281728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88