Gone to Feed the Roses

An Essay

by Katherine Vaz
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This was an astonishingly beautiful piece. It made me weep with gladness to read it.

Congratulations on your award, Katherine Vaz. We're lucky to have the opportunity to read your work.

The way she integrates the poem with her sorrow and her father’s impending death with the hurricane is delicately piercing. So many exquisite ideas and images include coupling a “wild turkey on the shed” with the phrase “disquiet had come to roost,” and this perfect sentence: “One night, swans glided under the bands of peony and carnation sky.”

Each word, each sentence was chosen with such care and poetic imagery. I want to read it over and over. Katherine Vaz has shown us that receding waters may leave wreckage behind, but sadness gifts us with its own unique beauty. I needed to read this today.

This piece gave me comfort, especially in the way the author accommodates death.

This is such a treasure chest of beauty in writing.