kari edwards WROTE FOR US

There are just so many layers in kari edwards' first posthumously published poetry collection, having been blue for charity (BlazeVOX Books). But when asked to provide a "blurb" by publisher Geoffrey Gatza, it took me literally three seconds to narrow my focus onto one aspect (so compelling is kari's meditation on it, or rather, its absence): Us.

I hope you read kari's having been blue for charity -- here's one reason, one blurb:

"Tell me how connected bodies blinded by remote thresholds, swim in glacial river zones?" kari edwards asks us, and keeps asking throughout having been blue for charity. kari is not asking theoretically. kari's question is a direct address to you and you and me (all of my me's). It is a personal address to us. For in that question and throughout kari's first posthumously published book, kari reminds that "us" is the pronoun too long frozen out in politics, culture and however else we might categorize the unfolding of current events. Thus, too, has this pronoun been marginalized by much contemporary poetry. So let us raise the pickax in a different type of war: let us free "us" to begin thinking about a world inherently interconnected but damaged. Let us think about the question's implications as regards our response-ibility. Start with the "I'--rev up that "I"!--but don't stop there. Us awaits.