What delight awaits the reader of Donna L. Emerson’s newest collection, Daphne Lifts Up. In these 57 poems, Emerson delineates moments of exquisite beauty and tenderness as well as glimpses of life’s casual cruelties. The effect is stunning; for example, “I Was Raised on Love” describes the speaker’s father as “a loving man . . . rarely there,” plays this contradiction out poignantly and readies us for a later poem (“In the Blue Room”) where the poet prepares herself and her father for his death. The book has a chronological frame within an emotional one. From poem to poem, the emphasis is on the poet’s eye and heart which work together to praise and ultimately accept all that life offers—pastures, forests, homes, water, family. There is fire that destroys, but there is fire that brings growth. The imagery is rich and the settings evocative. This is poetry that welcomes all and provides a tough and durable comfort.

–Deirdre Neilen, PhD, Editor, The Healing Muse

This Daphne asserts her power. She is not a victim of misogyny. I see her sense of self, her power to endure, and her bond with those who might sometimes think they are using her. Without her, who would they even be?

I love how Donna Emerson tells hard truths without bitterness. I am deeply impressed about the way the land itself comes alive in these poems. No matter how intellectual and wise she can be, she is so of this earth. I mean this as a compliment, the biggest compliment I know.

–Susan Bono, author, What Have We Here: Essays About Keeping House and Finding Home www.susanbono.com

Donna Emerson is an extraordinary poet of ordinary life, revealing intimate details of her and her family’s relationships. Her poems are intensely personal, yet resonate with us all. The language is spattered with color; music, art and nature trigger emotions throughout. It’s a collection of recent poems and some of her best work over a number of years. Family is the constant thread that ties the wide-ranging “Daphne Lifts Up” together. “She Lay Asleep, Wearing Oxygen” recounts the scene during Emerson’s mother’s passing, told with a seasoned reporter’s feel for detail and the power of an accomplished poet’s craft.

–Geoffrey Link, Editor and Publisher of the San Francisco Study Center Press

Grounded firmly in the realm of human relationships, Donna Emerson’s powerfully personal poems bring us into the life of the heart and heart-held memory, offering intimate depictions of a world alive with family and friends. Of her many poems about her mother, “She Lay Asleep,” is an especially poignant account of her mother’s illness and death. While wisely reminding us that loss waits at the last shore of love, the poems of Daphne Lifts Up vividly celebrate a life of enduring connections.

–Elizabeth C. Herron, PhD, Sonoma County Poet Laureate, 2022-2

Daphne Lifts Up

by Donna Emerson

Full-length, paper

Cover watercolor by Barbara Marlin-Coole

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SYNOPSIS

Daphne Lifts Up is certainly about Daphne, who appears half way through this book of journeys. She is not the Daphne you may have met before. She appears to like trees, especially the bay laurel. She is accustomed to being chased. Her travel through life includes abundant, verdant nature, lifelong exposure to the light and dark of many relationships, giving birth, embracing life, and accompanying many to natural deaths. Music plays a major role along the way, whether among birds, trees, sheep, water, or within the family. Singing, telling stories, mother’s piano, her own, listening to voices, songs of her children, filling herself with Nin, Cassatt, and Beethoven.

BIOGRAPHY

Donna divides her time between Petaluma, California, and her family homestead near Ithaca, New York. Retired from teaching at Santa Rosa Jr. College and her clinical social work practice, her recent poetry publications include La Pressa, The Paterson Literary Review, and Weber: The Contemporary West. Her chapbooks: This Water, 2007, Body Rhymes, 2009, Wild Mercy, 2011, and Following Hay, 2013. Her poetry books are The Place of Our Meeting (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Beside the Well (Cherry Grove Collections. 2019). And now, Daphne Lifts Up (Finishing Line Press, 2025).

Donna has received two nominations for the Pushcart Prize, one for "Best of the Net," two nominations for the California Book Award (Body Rhymes, 2009, The Place of Our Meeting, 2018), five awards from the annual Allen Ginsberg Contests, and numerous regional awards for her poetry, creative non-fiction, and prose. Many of her poems appear in journals or anthologies with her black and white or color photography. Anais Nin used Donna's portraits of Anais in her late diaries and press coverage in the New York Times.

Donna has taught poetry to elementary school children and made it part of her community college classrooms (1990-2015). She worked as a volunteer with Alzheimer’s patients at a residential facility to help them create individual and group poems and served as Board member and Events Chair for the Marin Poetry Center (2012-2014). 

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