Crossing the Ladder of Sun
Apol, L. (2004). Crossing the ladder of sun. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press
In her 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.
Winner 2004 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry
The relentless emotional honesty that characterizes Apol’s poetry is nowhere more evident than here: “Lianna, tenacious vine holding me, / … you / were the absence I was trying to fill, the end / of a sentence I didn’t know how to begin. // I am echo to your silence, // you are the loss I took all these years / to find.” To which the only authentic response can be a frisson. And a sigh.
—Jonathon Holden, author of Knowing: New and Selected Poems
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, author of Very Best (Almost) Friends
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, author of A Thousand Friends of Rain: New and Selected Poems
Crossing the Ladder of Sun engages the reader in complex and subtle questions about desire, loss, hope, eros, and ecology. … Each poem is carefully sustained in tone, imagery, and feeling; each poem is characterized by a love for the delicacy and sturdiness of language. These are poems that know their connections to the rhythms of the heart.
—Carl Leggo, author of Views from My Mother’s House
