The Fixed Hours invites the reader into moments of attention where the consolation of the natural world opens the door to revelation.
In fresh, spare language Kortney Garrison observes the patterns hidden in daily life. The everyday becomes mythic. These quiet yet potent poems honor saints who stir soup and feed the cat. And in following the earth’s recurring rhythms, the ordinary is transformed.
The poems traverse history and folklore to reveal a deeper kinship with ancient narratives. Straightforward, compressed lines expand into wild, holy places. Garrison’s tender poetics allow room for wonder and enchantment to give birth to hope.
The Fixed Hours by Kortney Garrison traces the life of the mystic Julian of Norwich. Demystifying Julian, she shows her birth, her prayer life, her arranging flowers, and her close attention guides the reader to humble places.
Renee Emerson, author of Church Ladies: Poems
Slow down and crack open this collection. In the smallest poems within, no bigger than Julian’s hazelnut, you may discover whole worlds of meaning.
Ann Kroeker, co-author of On Being a Writer
In a world where rain is wind chimes, seed pearls and hollow bones and place endow feelings, the reader is also given fresh reflections on Persephone, on her journey between seasons, as the true sun in her mother’s life. Here’s a reader’s chance to savor poetry’s round red seeds.
Carla Shafer, director of the World Peace Poetry Postcard Project
Evoking literary forebearers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Lorine Niedecker, and Julian of Norwich, Garrison shows us that she, too, is here to “make // this hidden place / holy again.”
Holly Wren Spaulding, author of Familiars
Reading this collection is like witnessing a magic trick: it steals your breath, then returns it fuller and deeper.
Sarah Teresa Cook, author of Birds (index without order)
Offering small, distilled sips of water, fire, earth, and air, Kortney Garrison forges a thin ridgeline path forward, guiding her readers to reach past their natural understanding to glimpse the sacramental elements of coyotes, chickadees, and cottonwood trees which encircle their everyday lives.
Jennifer Anna Rich, author of Prayer Spa: Ancient Treatments for the Modern Soul
These poems pierce through the welter and noise of modern life, calling us back to all that we can hold in our hands, showing us how to love the world one syllable at a time.
Melissa Wiley, author of The Nerviest Girl in the World
Garrison’s compact, precise poems render a world just slightly at a tilt from ours, both mysterious and real as salt. Whether they’re considering Julian of Norwich, Robert Frost, Persephone, or the ordinary beauty that surrounds us, these poems invite us to look again at our troubled world with love and wonder.
Nancy Reddy, author of The Good Mother Myth
Kortney Garrison has crafted quiet wonders.
James Maynard, author of The Fourteen Thieves and Other Sonnets
In The Fixed Hours, Kortney Garrison’s reverence and attention remain consistent throughout this tender and deeply rooted collection, reminding the reader, “Our only work / is to be changed.”
Jessica Gigot, author of A Little Bit of Land
Echoing in the background of Garrison’s shimmering landscape of sight and sound and feeling are the presences of Julian and St. Brigid, William Blake and Emily Dickinson, Demeter and Persephone.
Jonathan Potter, author of Tulips for Elsie: Poems
These poems remind us that every moment holds potential for a holy encounter.
Charlotte Donlon, author of The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other
The Fixed Hours turns expansiveness into its own prayer, insisting on the thickening and thinning of the world, never abandoning desire and the unmade bed.
Emily Stoddard, author of Divination with a Human Heart Attached
These are poems of wild holiness and earthen grace.
Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
Kortney Garrison
is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Elemental and Every Broken Year. She lives at the confluence of the Willamette River and the mighty Columbia where she homeschools her children and teaches humanities.