Pelted By Flowers – Poems

“Pelted by Flowers, the debut collection by poet Kali Lightfoot, is a wide-reaching portrait of a life in the world, touching on personal memory and identity without shying away from nature, society, or even the philosophical. . . . [The collection] takes the reader with deceptive ease through time, space, themes, even the personal and the external of the poet's 'much worried, much loved life.'” -- M. P. Carver * Lily Poetry Review *
"These are poems full of startling images and hope." * Mom Egg Review *
“In Pelted by Flowers, Lightfoot carries us through a life well-lived, populated by places and people we come to know—a grandfather in nineteenth century, frontier Dakota, ‘a drunken fucker…and a girl—in every town;’ Lake Michigan thunderstorms we see, smell, hear, feel; the painful throes of adolescent self-discovery; mature lesbian relationships; appreciation for a grandson, hands sticky with ice cream. In always vivid language, she transports us to a church supper: ‘forkfuls of lemon pie;’ and carries us into the wild, where she spends weeks alone as a ranger, or with groups, waking in tents, feeling ‘damp in our bones.’ This book is a lovely sweep through an existence often ‘pelted by flowers,’ and finally achieving a readiness for letting go, a well-earned acceptance in her final contemplation, of what comes next: the becoming ‘as dust drifting on a solar wind.’ As I put down the book, I experience a sigh of contentment, as if I, too, have just been pelted by flowers.” * Laura Foley *
“Lightfoot's debut collection is deeply felt and resonant. Lightfoot turned to poetry after several careers, ranging from psychotherapist to forest ranger, and the poems testify to a long life exceedingly well-lived. All of these past lives are explored with great panache in her poetry, and one finishes reading her with the conviction that she has at last found her truest calling in the making of verse.” * David Wojahn *