From cover to cover, Amber Rose Crowtree’s spectacular debut chapbook is filled with stunning poetic talent. Her poems, while accessible, are equally profound in the hands of this gifted poet. The title poem, Harboring the Imperfect, tells us, “/spring outlasts us, weeping out these nights of ice. /” Beautiful lines like this abound in her collection, transforming the minutia of life into finely structured artistic expressions. Savor every element of these luscious poems only to find yourself aching for more. I am certain Amber Rose Crowtree is destined for a bright poetic future.
–Dianalee Velie, Newbury NH Poet Laureate
These exquisite poems shelter an enviable quiet as they coax mythologies and reflections from the wonders of the natural landscape. They ask us to look back at ourselves, and also more deeply into our experience, until reading them feels like crouching over a surface of still water. Crowtree urges us to ‘say that eternity is one pulsing cell.’ Harboring the Imperfect is a rich collection from a poet who fully inhabits the complex and sorrowing world.”
–Jennifer Militello, author of The Pact
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Amber Rose Crowtree MFA grew up living by the four seasons on the coast of Downeast Maine, with worm-diggers, fishing families, blueberry-rakers, loggers, and chambermaids. She is an award-winning poet whose poems appear widely. Her upcoming chapbook, The Inviolable Hours, will appear through Finishing Line Press, 2021. Harboring the Imperfect is her debut.
She currently lives in New Hampshire.
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Harboring the Imperfect
Beyond the ventricles of snowflake-irises,
spring outlasts us, weeping out these nights of ice.
Earth shifts and gives-way-from spark green lawn
to snow-melted streams. Spring outlasts us—
our mortality, wrenched in a sheath. Stark
in its March wind breaths, unease in the finch’s unrest—
The partridgeberry sees nothing of this—cusped,
and christened, beneath snows’ cross.
Unlimited—unbound, bring on the furrowed-heart.
Be it a fever or façade, keeping the final apple clung?
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Amber Rose Crowtree MFA grew up living by the four seasons on the coast of Downeast Maine, with worm-diggers, fishing families, blueberry-rakers, loggers, and chambermaids. She is an award-winning poet whose poems appear widely. Her upcoming chapbook, The Inviolable Hours, will appear through Finishing Line Press, 2021. Harboring the Imperfect is her debut. She currently lives in New Hampshire.