Many of the poems collected in Crucial Blue have been published over the years in literary journals--The Hudson Review, Shenandoah, River Styx, among others. The title of the collection is taken from a line of "Out of Blue": 

                                    I had to lean into the broad leaves, to reach
                                    Deep and snap stems until my arms
                                    Were filled with blooms big as baby bonnets.
                                    The broken-green odor blessed the air
                                    As I carried that crucial blue across the lawn,
                                    And the maples blanched at the first gust of wind.

The crucial here is the work of the poet in voicing human experience as a kind of praise. Oftentimes, poetry is found in the deep reach, in the unconscious. For the cover art, the poet has chosen the work of her own daughter,  whose "dream baby" paintings address the same pressing issues of the unconscious and the responsibility of the artist. 



      
                                                                                     



Among the poems included in Crucial Blue is "Incipient Fireworks," chosen by Donald Justice as winner of the 1997 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award (The Formalist, Vol. 8, Issue 2, 1997).                       


                              Incipient Fireworks

               Nine p.m., July the fourth.  The roof,
               Broadway Garage, Johns Hopkins Hospital.
               Our little crowd is pressed against the rail:
               employees, lots of children, and enough
               patients--in wheelchairs, pushing I.V. poles--
               that here, among the cars, our measures seem
               extreme.  A roof away, the trauma team
               lights up the landing pad.  A siren wails
               thinly from some foresaken street below.
               But we remain intent on waiting for
               the dark to deepen, absolutely sure,
               the weather being fair, that we will know--
               any second, every one of us--
               the thrill of the expected come to pass.


Crucial Blue is due for release in May, 2008 from Rager Media, Inc.