Celebrate the release of We Look West, a collection of poetry by local poets.

Five poets look west while they insightfully reflect on their long paths from sunrise. The easy style of these poems invites readers to join the conversation—to don flannel as Harvey fires up his frying pan back home in his garage and lowers the walleye into sizzling oil in Heather Candels’ poem. Becky Boling traces “burgeoning cerebral branches,” tributaries that set readers comfortably adrift through her journey from childhood to mortal thoughts. Steven McCown reminds us “… the punch clock ticks” and describes that feeling of being an apparition in his own past—"here am I, alone–relic and revenant.” D.E. Green sums things up nicely, when he says, “Nesting is what we do. It keeps at bay the fearsome fact: there is no place to stay.” Julie Ryan writes about “this stillness of borrowed time” in the final poem of “We Look West” anthology. She explains, “we resist the wrap of darkness / because we don’t want this moment to fade.” The five Poets of the Northfield Public Library stir up “a bouquet of vintage memories” that readers will not let fade.—Amanda Bailey, President of the League of Minnesota Poets.

Pushcart nominee Steve McCown, a retired high school and college teacher, is the author of “Ghosting” (Up On Big Rock Poetry Series, 2020). His poems have appeared in several publications.

Also a Pushcart nominee, Becky Boling, the Stephen R. Lewis, Jr. Professor of Spanish and the Liberal Arts, emerita, taught at Carleton College for 36 years. She is the author of many novels, poetry collections, and scholarly papers.

D. E. Green taught English at Augsburg University for 33 years. His essays and poems have appeared in many venues. He is the author of the poetry collection Jumping the Median (2019) and the chapbook “Catastrophizing in Catastrophe” (2023).

Heather Candels is a former English teacher and a graduate of Manhattanville College’s Master of Arts and Writing program in Purchase, New York. Her work has been published in numerous literary magazines.

Julie A. Ryan is a poet, essayist, novelist, and visual artist. Her poems, essays, and prose have appeared in a variety of publications. She is the author of Relative Space (2021), a collection of concrete poems.