Refuge for Cranes:

Praise Poems from the Anthropocene

Wildhouse Publishing, 2023

The poems in this collection focus on the intersection of inner and outer landscapes, finding refuge in nature, art, and awareness itself. These are poems of wonder and alarm, in awe of the natural world yet concerned about the harm we do to it, and to ourselves. They range in topic from climate fires and the demise of bees to the “transparency of grace” and “the soul’s deep-down unfathoming.” There’s praise here for beauty “glinting among the detritus,” but there’s also a call to action, to restore a damaged world. Includes the poem “Night Song,” winner of the TallGrass Writer’s Guild Anthology Prize. Author Phyllis Cole-Dai, co-editor of the anthologies Poetry of Presence I & II commented, “If you enter these pages, be prepared to open yourself wider to the world, like a flower to the sun.” “Gagnon’s touching poems remind us of the beauty and value of nature now threatened worldwide by our carelessness,” said George Archibald, co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.

Night Train

Buttonhook Press, 2023

These 25 haiku evoke the vastness of the dark and wonder in the passing moment. They range in topic from the whistle of a train on a summer night to white petals drifting down under a crescent moon, from the cry of a screech owl to the glow of fireflies. It’s in the dark that “we remember our souls,” Clark Strand has written, and this collection invites us to do just that — to rediscover awe in the flutter of moth wings, the whisper of our breath as we lie awake at night.

Rumors of Wisdom

Concrete Wolf Press, 2019

Winner of the Louis Award, these sixty poems focus on ordinary moments — ripening pears on a windowsill, the flight of a crow over water, poppies blooming around an abandoned house. In their scrutiny, they find a “chill flame” licking at the heart, and a “breathing in, again, for all that’s fresh, unspoken.” Includes the poem “Cherries, After,” winner of the 2018 Robert Frost Poetry Award. “Luminous, lyric, sparkling with wit and the kind of subtle wisdom that comes from a long, slow, generous looking at life…these poems are simply irresistible in their appeal,” commented Mark S. Burrows, Ph.D., Poetry Editor of Spiritus and author of Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart.

Spell of the Ordinary

Finishing Line Press, 2018

This chapbook celebrates the simple joys of nature — spotting a rafter of wild turkeys, stepping out in frost, and watching blackbirds “glitter and bounce” in the pyracanthus, for instance. Many of the twenty-two poems contained here were included in the full-length volume, Rumors of Wisdom. “This stunning collection…exalts ‘evidence of the enduring mutable.’ Here you will find beauty in discord and discard, loveliness in the moment and in the minute,” observed Lana Hechtman Ayers, Editor of Concrete Wolf Press and author of The Dead Boy Sings in Heaven. 

Pages from the Blue Sun

Puffin Press, 1978 (out of print)

Poems and fragments in this early chapbook explore the transformative power of light and of enquiry. “Something longs to be revealed, mystery deified by light, form acknowledged as formless,” one poem notes. “Who owns the body, who knows the self, completely?” another asks. (In the collection of Robert Peters, Bowling Green State University Special Collections.)