Mostly Luck

“‘Father Pablo, lord of the elemental,/your Odes my atlas,’ Healy writes as invocation and homage to Neruda as she begins her book of praise. And what praise it is, inclusive and democratic, solemn and humorous, touching upon time, weather, mythology, fauna, peaches, garlic, and even butterscotch pudding, as she reminds us how ‘the whole universe exists so it can be sung to. Even sorrow. Even guilt.’ Insistently affirmative and endlessly inventive, Healy channels praise through sound and syntax, and through a precise and intensely curious gaze.” —Michael Waters, author of Celestial Joyride and Gospel Night “Singing the world with the kind of unapologetic abandon and doting craft of Mostly Luck requires an audacity difficult to muster in our times. Healy’s odes honor the subject of their affection with consummate precision. In their effervescence one hears echoes of Maxine Kumin’s belief that all love poems are elegies at the core. Healy loves the world with the ardor and tenderness of one who also fears for it deeply. Let her show you how to love, how to renew your vows to this world.” —Mihaela Moscaliuc, author of Immigrant Model and Father Dirt 3