Falling out of Step

The gem-tone brilliance of Carol Kner's poems in Falling Out of Step rewards every re-reading. This poet can convey a world of subtle reactions in a syllable's flicker. Her poems are rich in restraint, nuance, and craft. As Kner weaves love and death through the tapestry of a long marriage, she cultivates a companion craft to her formal dexterity: the rhythm of savoury observations. Her poems, with the humor, fortitude, anger, and understanding of a late-life wife who sees her husband from Parkinson's disease into the next world, offer the lucid recognitions (and the touches of the sublime), that our best poetry provides.

-Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems.




In Falling Out of Step, the poet asks "How can we decide what to keep and what to give away" in our brief lives? Carol Stevens Kner explores marriage, sickness, intimacy, love and loss in this rich collection. Kner's poems reveal emotional truths, and the reader will find healing over and over again in her brilliant verse.

-Leah Huete de Maines, Poet-in-Residence Emerita at Northern Kentucky University