Before the Forest Burns: Poems & Translations

Leslie Monsour seems to me one of the finest poets now writing in English. Her verse is descriptively arresting and psychologically astute. Though this collection centrally concerns our imperiled planet and politics, she writes with such clarity and technical skill - and such a warm appreciation of the natural world - that her poems leave us with the hope that empathy and intelligence may yet prevail over greed and folly.

--Timothy Steele, author, All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing

Before the Forest Burns marks the return of one of the most naturally gifted and skilled poets of her generation, so it seems fitting that many of the exquisite poems in the collection dramatize the eternal return of life to unpromising landscapes. Like Dickinson, with whom she plays, and Frost, with whom she quarrels, Monsour is a master of the unforgettable phrase, which permanently lodges a moment's inspired vision in the reader's mind. Her work is full of bright talismans for the dark times. Seize them now.

--Boris Dralyuk, author, My Hollywood and Other Poems

This collection reveals Leslie Monsour as poetry's preeminent archeologist. Her exquisitely crafted poems serve as trowels, brushes, and microscopes, with which she delves into and observes her California landscape. The poems are individual gems of imaginative language, ingenious rhyme and meter, and biting wit, as nuggets of truth emerge. Before the Forest Burns is a collection to be discovered and treasured, again and again.

-Midge Goldberg, author, To Be Opened After My Death

No one writes with sharper senses, a bigger heart, or greater wit than Leslie Monsour. And no one's work is more needed right now. Monsour paints indelible portraits of the life and beauty at stake on this threatened globe - plant, animal, and human. I challenge you to read more than five pages of Before the Forest Burns without wanting to send a copy to every member of Congress. And I bet that by the time you finish the last page, you'll join me in seeing her not just as "Poet Laureate of Laurel Canyon" but as a worthy laureate for her country and beyond.

--Melissa Balmain, Editor-in-Chief, Light