Michigan State University Press | Crossing the Ladder of Sun

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Laura Apol

Laura Apol is Associate Professor of Education at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including a full-length collection, Falling ...

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Crossing the Ladder of Sun
Poems by Laura Apol

Laura Apol

Winner of a 2004 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry

In her new collection of poetry, Crossing the Ladder of Sun, Laura Apol explores the ordinary moments of life—watching her daughter, picking blueberries, sharing confidences with friends, arriving and leaving, and driving, always driving—and transforms them into the extraordinary. This book is rich with the lyrical found in what is considered the mundane as it portrays the multiple roles of a woman’s life—mother, daughter, lover, ex-wife, friend. Apol’s highly personal poems reflect a caring and compassion that transcends loneliness and heartache.

Praise for Crossing the Ladder of Sun

"Laura Apol has written a book of poems from the heart. Rich in details and grounded in memories, her poems resonate with the eloquence of separation and loss, a longing for connection."
—Paul Janeczko is author of Dirty Laundry Pile and Favorite Poetry Lessons

"If you are willing to accept loss as your teacher, but not exile from joy; if the sweet friction of words can be your ladder from grief to resilience; if you have learned that 'lifelines are seldom free,' then this book will accompany your passage like a good friend. Laura Apol knows 'the just-right word in a prayer/saying stop here.' Her poems find the place, the moment, the sensation by which lightning may be understood—scars, rivers, blueberries. This book deepens my education.
—Kim Stafford, Director, Northwest Writing Institute

World Rights

100 pp., 6.00" x 9.00", 2003
Paper, $22.95,

0-87013-685-2
978-0-87013-685-6

World Rights

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