In a dark world of loss, betrayal and regret, Kathryn Kirkpatrick powerfully reveals experiences that we find recognizable yet surprising. These poems weave together the obsessions of a woman's mind with the physical passion she experiences. Kirkpatrick's is an authentic and sometimes painfully truthful voice. By writing with such fervor, she ensures that Out of the Garden lingers in the readers' minds long after first reading the text.
"Kathryn Kirkpatrick's new poems draw us in through the authenticity and passion of their voices, and they keep us reading for the compelling stories they tell, as well as for the grace and lyricism of their language. Inventive, reflective, alive to the complexities of human relationships, they accomplish what our best poems always do: the creation of worlds we find simultaneously recognizable and startling in their revelations." --Susan Ludvigson
"'This is the world we have made,' Kathryn Kirkpatrick tells us in this compelling book of poems, and hers is a dark and troubled world--full of loss, betrayal, and regret. But it is Kirkpatrick's unblinking gaze and hard-won wisdom that makes Out of the Garden so powerful, as well as why these poems will linger in readers' minds and hearts long after the last page is turned. --Ron Rash
"Out of the Garden manages to achieve that most desirable and yet most difficult work, the weaving together of woman's body and woman's mind. Here is a voice that speaks to physical passion and passionate thought, to choices that line by line, "undo/ the careful silences." Kathryn Kirkpatrick's words make their way through the wounding brambles and the seductive aromas of sex, loss, anger, betrayal, and desire, for desire is at the heart of these poems' dynamic movement toward clarity. In language that is never coy or self-induglent, she plunges out of the garden's innocence and into a world that is always shape-shifting, both seducing and humbling her; and bringing her to her knees in sheer sensual awareness of its pulsing vitality." --Kathryn Stripling Byer
Finalist, 2007 SIBA (Southern Independent Booksellers Association) Book Award.