Sharon Lask Munson is an award-winning Oregon poet.   Her work is widely published in many anthologies and journals.  Her most recent publications include the journals Frogpond, Indian River Review, Edge, Earth’s Daughters, Third Wednesday, Blood and Thunder, Cirque, and the anthologies, Wine, Cheese and Chocolate (Manzania Writers) The Knotted Bond (Uttered Chao Press), Seek It, Writers and Artists Do Sleep (Red Claw Press) and Forgetting Home (Barefoot Muse Press).

Just published:

Sharon Lask Munson writes with warmth born in the Midwest. Her restless spirit has taken her across the globe. These two elements, home and a love of adventure, give Munson a unique voice. Her poems in The Weight of Snow bring her two selves seamlessly together. Her poem “Kindred Spirit,” tells us all we need to know. Her choice to allow a stranger into her life and her ability to fulfill his desire for connection, speaks of a genuine heart. Her delicate choice of images and words speaks of a nuanced poetic voice that affectively communicates stories about real people, real places, and real feelings.
—Colette Jonopulous, Editor of Tiger’s Eye: A Journal of Poetry

Sharon Lask Munson’s poems travel through space, tunnel through time, and cross generations. Whether free verse, prose poem, haiku or haibun, they carry, lean on and converse with each other in this exquisite volume of poetry. Personal history, family traditions, food, the natural world, pop culture, all blend into a sumptuous word stew. Reality is often heightened. Snow becomes more than snow. A collection of watches becomes an emblem of time. A dessert pastry becomes more than a dessert, “no two…cut from the same dough.” She shows us that life can be painted with marvelous colors, sensuous images, and at “end of day” be “strewn with possibilities.”
—Paul Fisher, Rumors of Shore, An Exaltation of Tongues

Hold these poems in your mouth for a while. They’re filled with memory’s many flavors. If there is such a thing, Sharon Lask Munson is a master poetry chef. She’s a child who sneaks into the attic and examines old treasures. We sneak in with her. One poem’s title “Love, Decoded” is indicative of what Munson accomplishes in this wonderful collection. Poems in the middle section grow up and heat up—“riots of color in an untamed garden.” The last section takes a darker turn, where the poet claims she will “track down a scrap of my heart unleashed accidentally.” Then Munson returns to the feast—eggs, golden raisins, brown sugar, farmer’s cheese, walnuts, and a hint of cinnamon.” Savor it all.
—Colette Tennant, Professor of English at Corban University,
    Eden and After, Commotion of Wings

Featured poem:

Periphery
         at twelve

Woodhull Lake at dawn—
gunmetal gray, smooth and still.
Wooden cottages dot the shoreline.
Red Egrets gather on the raft.
Rowboats mark time.

By ten, the public beach
swarms with sunbathers.
I spend my mornings floating
in shallow waters, hunting shells,
constructing castles in sand.

Afternoon, I gape at teens
rubbing Coppertone on crisp bodies,
watch them play hide and seek
under cotton beach towels.

At night, pulled in by the music,
I head to the Big House,
the lake’s historic dance hall;

stand outside in the shadows
where ghosts of Tommy Dorsey and Glen Miller
swing and sway with Sammy Kaye.

Couples rock and roll to Great Balls of Fire,
dance low and slow to Blueberry Hill.
Hoods in jeans loiter in the doorway,
practice scowling, smoke Camels, sip beer.

I dither at the juncture, unsure,
still safely on the far side, peeking in.

The Weight of Snow

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The Weight of Snow - $15.95
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ISBN: 978142836232 | Library of Congress number: 2019933951