A01=April Ossmann
American potential
Author_April Ossmann
bridging divides
bridging political divides
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
civility
common divinity
compassion and civility
divine
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
feminist anthem
healing
healing through art
her story
intimate presence
make America great again
nonpartisan
personal transformation
poetry workshops
political and personal intersection
political unity
restorative poetry
self-reflection
soul
spiritual poetry
State of the Union
The Golden Rule
the personal is political
the political is personal
unapologetically spiritual
understanding compassion
unity
We
we the people
Whitman influence
Product details
- ISBN 9781636281728
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2025
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
We takes an unapologetically spiritual stance in bridging politicized divides, exploring conscious and unconscious prejudices with lyricism, warmth, and self-implicating humor, how we are shaped by and create our nation by how we see ourselves and others.
The poems investigate what unites us; how the personal is political, and the political is personal; changing our perceptions to heal families, friendships, and country of incivility and villainization by practicing greater compassion; trying to see past egos to souls, as “We” suggests in conversation with Whitman: “I celebrate my being, every atom/of myself and you, lamp and mirror/of all that is”; in a new Preamble to the Constitution; and in the feminist “Peace Hymn for the Republic.” We begins with a non-partisan vision of soul, and ends driving a rural road at dawn in “State of the Union Aubade,” both paeans to our common divinity.
April Ossmann is the author of Event Boundaries (awarded a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant and a Vermont Book Award finalist) and Anxious Music—both from Four Way Books—and has published poetry widely in journals and anthologies. A former executive director of Alice James Books, she owns a poetry consulting business (www.aprilossmann.com) offering manuscript editing, publishing advice, tutorials, and workshops, and taught at the low-residency MFA in the Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College. She lives in White River Junction, Vermont.
