Part American history, part poetic memoir, part multifaceted and lyrical study of tender human life, Jacqueline Kudler's Ripenings is a trajectory, a richly detailed arco iris of ancestors, intimate family, friends, lifelong loves, inevitable loss. "Revelation begins in attention," the author writes, and whether that attention manifests here in paeans to New York, to life in Northern California's landscape, or to the people who have accompanied her through her life, love is what shines through in these poems, these ripenings—this book a gift of love laid at our feet.
Jacqueline Kudler, a long-time resident of Sausalito, California, taught classes in memoir writing and literature at the College of Marin in Kentfield for many years before her death in 2024. Her poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, Sacred Precinct, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2003; her second, Easing into Dark, in 2012. A valued member of the poetry community in Marin County, she was awarded the Marin Arts Council Board Award in 2005 and the Marin Poetry Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
