<p>What a fresh, original voice! Melody Newey Johnson's poems look</p><p>inward and outward at the same time and therefore sing with</p><p>insights about her journey through the canyons, fields, and</p><p>mountains of a well-lived, thoughtful life. Her metaphors illustrate</p><p>this simultaneity: her belly is "a moon full of baby"; she trusts the</p><p>sky's "billion years of blue." Poems as tight and spare as Emily</p><p>Dickinson's offer the same kind of depth: beneath each carefully cut,</p><p>honed surface lie extraordinary thought, faith, and imagination for</p><p>readers to follow.</p><p>--Susan Howe, Author of <em>Stone Spirit</em> and <em>Salt</em>, and an AML Award-winner in poetry</p>