Cake: Selected poems by Doreen Fitzgerald. 
Includes poems read by Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion.
5.5" x 8.5"
Perfect bound
Soft cover
78 pages
 
Doreen's second book, Skating on the Edge of Time, can be purchased here.
 
Reviews:
Garrison Keillor has ‘Cake’ — reads it, too
Fairbanks-area writer Doreen Fitzgerald got the Garrison Keillor treatment this summer. On June 26, The Writer’s Almanac host read her poem, “Dog Days”  on his nationally broadcast public radio program. The poem is from her recently published book, Cake.  “Fitzgerald writes disciplined poems, tight in rhythm and sound, often in formal modes,” according to the site posted by publisher, The Ester Republic Press.
                                                                                                                              www.alaskawriters.com
 
"Cake is an enriching and fun collection of poetry by a skilled author and a genuinely loving human being." --The New York Reader
 
Back cover:
Readers approach a book of poetry with questions lurking at the back of hteir minds: Will this work share new ways of experiencing the world? Will it sing? WIll it be enjoyable? For this book, the first collection of Fitzgerald's poems, the answers are emphatically Yes, yes, and yes.
 
Many of these poems are strongly sensory, generating indelible, fresh visual images of things as diverse as the tiny tracks of a vole in the snow and the sweep of auroras across the sky, or aural images of a madman's song and a jazzman's sax. The precision and elegance of the poet's words can make readers pause to appreciate their own perceptions in light of hers. Or to examine their feelings: One of Fitzgerald's strong themes is the linking of families across generations; from an eloquent, spare elegy for a dead granddaughter to an appreciation of the storytelling of a grandfather, she shows the ties that bind--and some of the knots and ravels that afflict those relationships.
 
Fitzgerald writes disciplined poems, tight in rhythm and sound, often in formal modes. She understands in her bones the musical basis of poetry, and some of hte works here almost chant their way off the page (consider "Connections," for example). Yet there is nothing stuffy in this book and even her most tender love lyric may end on a wry twist. For all their sophistication, these are accessible, delightful poems, enjoyable from first to last. 
 
Doreen Fitzgerald lived in Alaska for thirty years. Along with the varied writing and editing she did during her time there, she was making poems. Her writing reflects experiences that range from the academic world to the subarctic garden, from news writing to tending bar.