Within the Hour by Rebecca Eland (Plein Air Editions, paperback)

Publication Date: October 10, 2016

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. Rebecca Eland's spare, musical poems are peopled and placed and imbued with Americana. Beaded moccasins, urban baseball, churches and clock towers, well-worn ballet shoes, abstract expressionist paintings and folk lyrics. And these are at the center of emotions that her poetry leads the reader towards, as a friend might take another with a firm loving hand. Written mostly in the Bay Area, the poems of this book include collaborations with the painter / poet Alvaro Cardona-Hine and Andrew Schelling, a piece performed with ballerinas, and a brief translation from the Spanish. Out of each occasion, Eland lifts up a gentle, blossoming beauty. You hear in her lyrics echoes from Lorca and Dante, syllables from the Cherokee, and the promise of William Carlos Williams' great renewal of springtime, found in the weeds and surprising flowers of North America's roadsides.