Margaret J. Hoehn • The Trajectory of Sunflowers

• The Readers' Choice Award 2003 •

On the back cover of Lost in Seward County, a Saiser fan states she is one of Nebraska's literary treasures. I agree. Her poetry typifies what is strong and pure among those who call Nebraska home. Ms. Saiser says in Re-Entry: "I have your genes, your no-fooling DNA." No-fooling, indeed. Everything about this poet's work is served straight up. In one of my favorites, Taking the Baby to the Prairie, she says: "I lift this child to grassland, / to kingbird, / to cedar and sumac, / to long roots hidden like a deer in the draw."

Her words bring prairies to life, communicate their beauty simply and effectively. In Nine Mile Prairie, April: "The smell of plum brush so sweet it makes some exquisite nerve ache." In Not So Much Bottom Line but Bluestem she speaks of family ties and friendship, what's truly important: "....and I was ashamed how I had a moment before / been promoting myself, trying to get ahead, / selling myself when what matters is close against the ribs / and next to the beating noise of the heart...."

This poet has won numerous awards. I say, for good reason.
   • Laurel Johnson - Midwest Book Review

About the Author:

Margaret J. Hoehn lives with her husband and two children in Sacramento, California, where she practiced law for many years. She is presently raising her children and doing volunteer work for a hospice program and a medical library. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Nimrod, New Millennium, Peregrine, Inkwell, The Paterson Literary Review, and many other journals. Her chapbooks, Vanishings, won the 1998 Hibiscus award, and Changing Shapes won the 1999 Howard Quentin Award. In 2000, she received the Hart Crane Award, as well as the annual poetry awards from Andrew Mountain Press, ByLine, and Briar Cliff Review. In 2001, she received the Southwest Writers Poetry Prize, the Calvin Fletcher Memorial Prize for Poetry, the annual poetry awards from Briar Cliff Review and Virginia Adversiaria, and her chapbook, Balancing on Light, won the Riverstone Chapbook Prize. She was awarded the 2002 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry.