Unreasonable Weather

By Elizabeth Morse

Reading Unreasonable Weather by Elizabeth Morse is like having coffee with your most original, quirky, and savvy friend. The verse here, whether about dreams and sleep, time, jobs, drinking, hazmat, or the birds of North America, is endlessly interesting; there is something going on in every poem. You come to like the narrator and her unique point of view; you come to expect the unexpected in the punchline that is each poem's coda. Here there is terror and grit, the disorders of love, homelessness, Three Mile Island, but above all, humor, albeit dark and trenchant. Cuddle up with a cat or two and read Unreasonable Weather; likely, you will not be able to put it down.

-Larissa Shmailo, editor of the Writing Resilience Anthology

A stunning collection, a return to the New York City of yesterday, as Morse's poems take the reader by the hand and guide them back to a place that is timeless, where heartbreak and longing for a simpler time awaits. Turn after turn grips us, and we don't want to let go, from the very start where "Dawn fills the sky with a tide of light. / Today brims with wild hope and fear" and ending with the unexpected, "The coffee is black, as always, / way before long COVID / trapped you up in the Bronx."

-Jennifer Juneau, author of More Than Moon (Is A Rose Press)

In a collection, aptly titled, Unreasonable Weather, Morse must keep rezoning her life stuck between things leaving her and things she's leaving. It is a tribute to the poet's skill that she maintains that focal point, without getting stuck there. From being let go at a long-held job to no longer recognizing the Manhattan streets she's walked on her whole life, she's become a person she doesn't even know anymore. Worst of all is the loss of her son. She'd give anything "for his return, even as a dream." She finds a way, here, in this collection dedicated to him, how to survive this loss. And surviving is what this collection is really about: whether it's old nuclear war fears morphed into the current war in Ukraine, or surviving a late bout with COVID. "Some things are better lost," she concludes. With that, her "Young girl's journey is over" and ours
just begun, with Unreasonable Weather to read.

-Linda Lerner, author of Taking the F train (NYQ books)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1639807039
• ISBN13: 9781639807031
• Release Date: March 2025
• Publisher: Kelsay Books
• Length: 92 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"