-Megan Merchant, author of Hortensia, in Winter (New American Press) and editor of Pirene's Fountain
Stork Rein, in Beautiful Artifacts, opens the book with the loss of a child, a wound that never heals. The poet is left "searching for the seams between this world and the next." In Broken, he repairs a screen door sagging from one hinge, but relationships can't be fixed by replacing hardware. There is wisdom in this collection. Stork asserts, if "you are travelling alongside the fence, jump over." And he reveals it is the work itself, the engagement of the imagination, that matters. In these poems there is the "blaze of promise everywhere."
-Steve Trenam, published poet, teacher at Santa Rosa Junior College, and founding member of Poetic License Sonoma
Stork Rein's aptly titled Beautiful Artifacts demonstrates how the mysteries of loss-horses of grief / radiant sky / the sudden companionship of sorrow-can open us to an ever-expanding love of the world and all its inhabitants. As the devastating death of his young daughter spirals the poet into the unknowable, we witness the gradual embrace of his dying father and heartbroken mother, of the all that is myself and angels in the shape of flies. Read this love letter to life and prepare to be opened-wider, deeper, and closer to true.
-Prartho Sereno, Poet Laureate Emerita of Marin County, CA and author of Starfall in the Temple (Blue Light Press)