Carrie Magness Radna has metaphorically and literally traveled through a blue spectrum, and has brought back a cornucopia of wonderful words to share with in in her amazing collection, In the Blue Hour.

             In the first line of the first poem in the book, ‘In the Sky,’ she asks: “If all the lights blew out, can we repair the sky?”
             
             And that ‘blew’ sets up all the blues that follow.
           
            Carrie delineates the blues she will inherit through her family.
           
           In the poem ‘Blue,’ she traces the path of blueness from her father’s mother down thorough her father and into herself.

The poem ends with a wonderful stanza:

           I am true blue, compassionate like my father
                         and my mother, who both had blotted
                         the old bitter things from their vocabulary.

  Despite the travails of her journey through life, with its many blue variations,

Carrie Magness Radna tells us in the poem, ‘Keep Breathing,’ that she will keep breathing even when caught in the dregs of life.

–Ron Kolm

You can get your copy of gorgeous blue-based poems (108 pp.)

In the blue hour: Poems (Nirala Publications, 2021) online

from Amazon.com, Bookshop.org, and Small Press Distribution (SPD) (http://www.spdbooks.org), AND

on Carrie Magness Radna’s website (https://carriemagnessradna.com/product/in-the-blue-hour/) for $15 + free signing by the author! (Or flag her down at a future poetry reading; she’ll have some books with her)