I Think I Know You


 
In I Think I Know You, Julie Gard explores the human struggle to understand each other’s hearts and histories, along with our own. These prose poems speak of deep connection and tragicomic gaps in understanding, as life’s pedantic, transcendent rhythms are mined for revealing moments and messages. Elements include dialogue overheard in northern Minnesota coffee shops and at the Jersey shore, personal crashes and landings in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and queer identity in middle age. The final section of the book is a series of text messages the author sent to herself during a crucial election season, examining daily life, dreamscape, and the collective psyche in a time of political upheaval. Throughout the poems in this book, Gard attempts to map out, complicate, and bridge divides, concluding that a sense of belonging, and a shared sense of home, may be the most important thing we have to offer each other.    
 
"Vivid and irresistible..."   
 
     - Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
"I Think I Know You begins with an intimate epistle and culminates in a brilliant, aching, yearning chronicle, as long and revelatory as these recent years."

     -  Michael Kleber-Diggs, Worldly Things
 
"Gard can hold opposing forces with gentle humor. I’m glad to meet a poet who can take in both the good and bad of this world and give readers beauty and hope. This is a great book."
 
     -  Sheila Packa, Surface Displacements
 
"In masterfully crafted poetry, Gard examines illusions of cause and effect, time, memory, identity, family, and blame, exposing the many lives each of us has lived and lost in our past and alternate presents."
 
     - Jayson Iwen, Roze and Blud
 
"I Think I Know You is a wonderfully luminous collection of prose poetry … These poems travel far and yield rich insights. This is salutary, perceptive and beautiful writing."
                                              
     - Paul Hetherington, Prose Poetry: An Introduction

Buy the book from Zenith Bookstore or Amazon.