To the Left of the Sun

By turns irreverent, playful, and serious, Haltmaier’s poems explore the phenomena of daily life with a deft clarity that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Brimming with nuance and surprise, To the Left of the Sun touches on the themes of solitude and union, love and letting go, and the redemptive power of nature.

Haltmaier’s unflinching eye lays bare the hidden miracles in choosing a head of cabbage at the farmer's market, taking a morning walk, or watching her mother’s decline into dementia. The everyday and the heartrending undergo a light-infusing alchemy in her hands—as the poet invokes what she calls the “protective buoyancy of words.”

At its heart, To the Left of the Sun is a portal to a world where wonder, humor, and beauty can be found in even the most unlikely places. It is in this “place of quiet/where the earth is padded with pine needles/and smells of sap and new flowers” that disappointments and dreams, joy and struggle, love and grief, offer their unexpected gifts with a “a flush of recognition that spreads faster than a single malt.” 

Linda Flaherty Haltmaier

Linda Flaherty Haltmaier is an award-winning poet and screenwriter. She is the Poet Laureate of Andover, Massachusetts and the winner of the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize for her full-length collection, "Rolling up the Sky" (2016). Her work has been shortlisted for the Princemere Poetry Prize and the Tucson Festival of the Book Literary Award. Her poems have appeared extensively in journals and anthologies including Wildness: Voices of the Sacred Landscape, All We Can Hold, Ink & Letters, and more. Her debut chapbook, "Catch and Release", was published by Finishing Line Press.

A Harvard graduate, Linda has earned writing residencies at the Noepe Center for the Literary Arts and been a poetry contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Along the way, she has been a fundraiser in East Harlem, a marketing executive, a restaurant reviewer, and an over-excitable soccer coach. Linda lives with her husband and daughter–-and craves the solitude of the ocean where she finds sea glass and inspiration.