Collected Poems is the culmination of more than four decades of poetic work by Jo Ann Lordahl. Drawing from seven chapbooks assembled over a writing life that spans continents, relationships, loss, healing, and renewal, this collection brings together approximately 126 poems into a single, cohesive volume. It includes her earliest published poems alongside previously unpublished work in a closing Miscellaneous section.
The chapbooks represented here trace the full arc of a writer’s interior life. The End and the Beginning opens the collection with poems of trust, betrayal, and the tension between intuition and reason. Hunting Butterflies, Hunting Love pursues desire with clear eyes and sharp wit. Night Thoughts: Dreams of Pain and Joy moves through the hours of darkness with unflinching honesty. Argentine Journal: Coming of Age as a Poet draws on lived experience in South America, from the falls at Iguazú to the streets of Buenos Aires. Reconnecting the Healing Circle weaves poetry with themes of women’s health and embodied experience. A Unicorn, A Pyramid, and A Forest and The I Who Speaks Is Not I venture into identity, the cosmos, and the multiplicity of self. Skylight Poems closes the formal chapbook selections before the Miscellaneous section offers final, intimate surprises.
Lordahl’s poems have appeared in journals including Women’s Voices, Impetus, Woodrider, Skylight, Maui Muses, Literary Quarterly, and Onionhead. Her work has also been featured in anthologies including Four Women Speak and The Break-up Queen.
In her foreword, Lordahl writes that poetry is what she turns to when she has no words for feelings that tear her apart, and describes it as the jewel in the crown of expression. This collection is proof of that commitment, a poet’s life’s work gathered in one place for the first time.