Kali Lightfoot's kindergarten teacher told her parents that Kali had "a well-developed sense of beauty and can skip with both feet." This proved prophetic for a life that has included a number of careers and passions-Lightfoot has earned a master's degree in physical education, worked as an executive and a teacher, served as a wilderness ranger, managed educational travel, and provided body-oriented psychotherapy. After gaining her sobriety and coming out as queer, Lightfoot returned to poetry at the age of sixty-five, earning her MFA at age seventy. In a debut collection of poems that favor a narrative style but also experiment successfully with poetic forms, Lightfoot writes in a voice that is by turns wistful, comedic, and grave. After a long career, she has come late and happily to a life in poetry.

About the Author
Kali Lightfoot has worked as a teacher, a wilderness ranger in Washington state, an executive at Road Scholar, and has retired from her position as founding Executive Director of the National Resource Center for Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes. Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Poetry South, and Split Rock Review. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

Reviews
"Pelted by Flowers, the debut collection by poet Kali Lightfoot, is a wide-reaching portrait of a life in the world, touching on personal memory and identity without shying away from nature, society, or even the philosophical. . . . [The collection] takes the reader with deceptive ease through time, space, themes, even the personal and the external of the poet's 'much worried, much loved life.'" -- M. P. Carver * Lily Poetry Review *
"These are poems full of startling images and hope." * Mom Egg Review *
"In Pelted by Flowers, Lightfoot carries us through a life well-lived, populated by places and people we come to know-a grandfather in nineteenth century, frontier Dakota, 'a drunken fucker...and a girl-in every town;' Lake Michigan thunderstorms we see, smell, hear, feel; the painful throes of adolescent self-discovery; mature lesbian relationships; appreciation for a grandson, hands sticky with ice cream. In always vivid language, she transports us to a church supper: 'forkfuls of lemon pie;' and carries us into the wild, where she spends weeks alone as a ranger, or with groups, waking in tents, feeling 'damp in our bones.' This book is a lovely sweep through an existence often 'pelted by flowers,' and finally achieving a readiness for letting go, a well-earned acceptance in her final contemplation, of what comes next: the becoming 'as dust drifting on a solar wind.' As I put down the book, I experience a sigh of contentment, as if I, too, have just been pelted by flowers." * Laura Foley *
"Lightfoot's debut collection is deeply felt and resonant. Lightfoot turned to poetry after several careers, ranging from psychotherapist to forest ranger, and the poems testify to a long life exceedingly well-lived. All of these past lives are explored with great panache in her poetry, and one finishes reading her with the conviction that she has at last found her truest calling in the making of verse." * David Wojahn *



Book Information
ISBN 9781933880860
Author Kali Lightfoot
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint CavanKerry Press
Publisher CavanKerry Press
Weight(grams) 186g
Dimensions(mm) 226mm * 155mm * 9mm