Come Closer

Come Closer is a slim volume of prose poems by gifted poet, novelist, and prose artist Laurie Blauner. This book also won a Bitter Oleander Press chapbook contest in 2022. I read Come Closer in one sitting, on a chilly winter Seattle evening. Reading the entire book in one go is how I recommend you read this. That way you can properly immerse. For me the reading experience reminded me of those long ago days when one might receive a letter, pages long, in which the letter writer opens up her heart and shares her innermost thoughts, ideas, and imaginings. The individual pieces have been carefully curated, with one leading to the next, and the four parts producing a smart whole. Reading Come closer was also like walking along a forest path, where you don’t know exactly what will be round the next corner–rocks, scree, pine trees, stream, mushroom, maybe a deer or downy woodpecker–but somehow, it is all of a piece. And the pleasure is in the journey and the little surprises that take you deeper into the forest, or add, in subtle fashion, to your understanding of things.