Two Minutes of Light

by Nancy K. Pearson

“In Two Minutes of Light, Nancy K. Pearson invents visceral, exciting language to enact redemption with stunning clarity. In Pearson’s world, there is no sentimentality to redemption, no fear of the negative. She doesn’t let absolutes do the work. As with Dante, the voice changes as it travels from hell to the scary possibility of happiness. But there’s no urge to create a model, a template for behavior. Pearson works in the moment, with a keen ear and a live, fluid line. I think of the Arab poet who said he would not trade his moment of mortality for God’s omniscience. Two Minutes of Light is a dazzling voyage.”

—D. Nurske, judge for the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award

“Nancy Pearson's poems are rife with the urgencies of constructing a self. It is a harrowing, hard-fought project. As one poem asks, ‘ By what small margins do we survive? ’ This is a book fiercely in love with the world, a book that unflinchingly examines what can keep someone from inhabiting that world, whole. Two Minutes of Light is a startling, luminous, and moving first collection.”

—Kim Addonizio

“These poems remind me of collecting stones while walking, each one leading the way to a house in the forest. I want to say they spell redemption, but the forest has its own kind of talking and what’s extraordinary about this extraordinary book is how that world — tree, insect, rain, fish, flower, bird — has its saying and song too. I’ve never seen the world of human trauma and recovery set in what we call ‘the natural world,’ mediated by the human gaze, yes, and so blessedly indifferent to us. I read this book over and over again.”

— Marie Howe