Immortal Materialism

Immortal Materialism – is that a contradiction? Or a paradox? In her new book, Kathrine Yets grapples with such questions as she creates poetry from the choices of how to live in this post-Edenic world where, as the concluding poem asserts, “There is just too much / to go back again.” In her vivid images and the music of her well-turned lines, Yets engages with what may be familiar but is too often overlooked. Her poetry helps us to see it in fresh and powerful ways.

— Margaret Rozga, 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate, author of Holding My Selves Together: New & Selected Poems and other titles.

In her thoroughly engaging collection, Immortal Materialism, Kathrine Yets reflects on the hidden, inner life of things.  She writes pithy, tantalizing odes to clothing, a bolo tie, a car, and even a sword.  Yets entices us with luscious, colorful descriptions, “Then there's the robin egg, / the navy, the cobalt swag.”  In the title poem, Yets reveals a diamond truth about loss and how the need to acquire things becomes a way “to fill a void.”  At the end of “Turning 30,” we see the spark of hope that we all truly need in life, “I am whole and holy / no matter what my mind tells me.”  In this insightful collection, Yets reminds us that life should be filled with wonder, not things, “your words are the real sapphires and rubies.”

—Cristina M. R. Norcross, Founding Editor of Blue Heron Review, author of The Sound of a Collective Pulse and other titles

Yets’ latest collection burrows into the excess of materialism. She gives life and meaning to the material goods in life that make us feel better as humans. Small things like a new blazer and a treasured bolo that gives a person new confidence and a sense of beauty. But also, big things like cars and kayaks that enable the poet to travel and explore the world. However, it’s not all roses and contentment. The hopelessness of buyer’s remorse and the guilt of our excesses, both personally and globally, are touched upon in incriminating verses like, “Dearly departed, remember\ you are more than the Prada\ you wore in this life,” and “We sold the stars\every last

one\in order to pay\for our place\in the universe.” This book helps us examine the motives behind our materialism.

— Jim Landwehr, Poet Laureate emeritus for the Village of Wales, Wisconsin, author of Tea in the Pacific Northwest, Thoughts From a Line at the DMV, and other titles.