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Acclaimed
for combining the accessible and profound, Kim Dower’s
poetry has been described by The Los Angeles Times as
“Sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor
and heartache,” and by O Magazine as “unexpected and
sublime.” Her third collection, Last Train to the
Missing Planet, rockets forward in this trajectory,
taking us on a journey to places we’ve often visited but
never seen. Buy a ticket and hop aboard: experience
love, longing, and passion tipped sideways; irreverent,
touching, and disarmingly sexy as illuminated by an
original and brilliant light. Lose yourself in the
unexplored sensations of the ordinary in this engaging
year of moments, both comforting and terrifying—and
always extraordinary.
Read a selection of poems from
LAST TRAIN TO THE MISSING PLANET
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REVIEWS
“These
poems speak in the voice of an old, trusted friend who
knows you, who has come to visit and remind you of who
you are and what a life is all about. They speak not of
the highs and lows, but about the grey space between
tragedy and tenderness, memory and loss, fragility and
perseverance—that space where the soul and the truest
self live.”
-Richard Blanco
Presidential Inaugural Poet
“In her third collection (after Slice of Moon), Dower
invests the most ordinary moments with a significance
that doesn’t feel strained. “Dawn cracks me open like a
clam,” she proclaims in “Another Morning. “Am I alone/
pretending it’s you pushing me// out of sleep, or us
together, a team half waking.” And when the situation
turns serious, she doesn’t become grim but reveals the
passion that underpins many of her poems: “From our
kisses, obliterate it with desire,” she says of the end
of the world, “…locked in an emergency embrace.” A poem
on natural disasters concedes that “life changing
decisions will be made” yet ends, “it’s only a cleansing
for the paradise that can lie ahead,” and many of the
poems resonate with that same determined energy. Dower
paints scenes nicely (“Santa Ana winds lifting bones
from the earth”), and even an encounter with a raccoon
on a Los Angeles byway is invested with magic, as the
speaker imagines the creature a cursed prince or
princess looking for someone to break the spell.
VERDICT Throughout, Dower maintains a fine level of
craft and reverberant feeling. A satisfying collection
for most readers."
-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
"What a pleasure it is to settle into Kim Dower’s latest
collection. Dower’s poetry creates a quiet space around
itself, full of worldly, humorous insights into life as
it is.”
-Janet
Fitch
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