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Poetry. What begins in grief, sails forth like a ship's spider on silk rigging, swinging from a draft of hope. PASSING THROUGH BLUE EARTH is a lyric meditation on the vagary and seduction of life, a celebration of both 'presence and absence on this blue planet / this perfect earth.' One is haunted by its loveliness. --Sandra Alcosser

Cynthia Neely's love of this blue planet sings out in poetry that weaves beauty and loss, love and grief, the conflicting pulls of holding on and letting go. Rich in music and precise observation, these poems grapple with the paradoxes of life, mixing ode and elegy into the final, poignant truth that we are all only passing through. --Ellen Bass

PASSING THROUGH BLUE EARTH is an elegant meditation on grief, and in the hands of a poet of careful precision and unsentimental emotion, we are granted to discover beauty in the uncertainties of life--its unpredictability that ranges from the molecular, the cellular, to the grander issues of the environment and our place in it. Cynthia Neely is a poet of great skill and intelligence who welcomes us into her private way of seeing and feeling the world. We are the better for having accepted her invitation. --Kwame Dawes.