THE LIGHT OF SMALL ONES BLINKING, poetry by Ellen Devlin
Publication Date: June 15, 2025
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-04-8
Ellen Devlin’s poems are “strangers with notes in their hands.” The Light of Small Ones Blinking is composed in masterful bursts of visions: past lives, the past itself, and places we may or may not have been. Dedicated to the poet’s grandchildren, this collection is an offering of the highest kind, one that acknowledges darkness that exists and continues through it. Devlin’s writing is urgent. She wants us to brace ourselves for survival, for the aftermath of “wet family photos on your desk.” The sentiment is crushing, but regardless of shadows, joyful light reenters in “the railroad builders, fishermen, laundry / baskets carried through Arles by wet-wash boys, / carpenters, cooks, and artists.” While we will all become “ghosts at the edge/of place,” Devlin reminds us, children’s “sneakers tread, the light of / small one’s blinking.”
Praise for Ellen Devlin & The Light of Small Ones Blinking
Reading The Light of Small Ones Blinking is like walking briskly past a life and catching glimpses through a slatted fence, or like a landscape of memory illuminated by successive flashes of lightning. These honed and startling poems offer up images of the past as talismans for the women who touch them: “a ladderback chair’s measured spaces,” the “presser foot and throat plate” of an old Singer sewing machine, telephone booths that “stood on street corners like risky / invitations, glass-walled, upended coffins.” Object by object, channeling Nora or Rita or Missouri or Anna, each poem bespeaks the well-practiced vigilance and seasoned humor of one who has done, over and over, the work of care: “I have searched this bus and there are no sleeping children.” This book offers the breadth of biography sliced as thin as possible, starting all the way back where “Before is a child swinging on a gate.” Then the during, the long middle after innocence, is a dress: whether excavated from humble closet or high fashion, for Devlin the dress is a figure that stands in for the shape and weather of women’s days, their devotions and departures. As for after, I’ll let you discover the chilling final poem of that name, a poem that heaves the weight of fate over the threshold of the uncanny, for yourself. I’d know an Ellen Devlin poem anywhere—a rare, keen, singular voice.
—B.K. Fischer, author of Ceive & others
There’s as much to be gleaned from what’s said as what’s left unsaid in Ellen Devlin’s The Light of Small Ones Blinking. Part Valentine and Tate, Glück and Ruefle—but wholly Delvin’s—these Janus-faced, chiseled capsules of “scattermoon” catalogue obsoletion (manually-operated elevators, pay phone booths), upend expectations (what does it mean to be the “anti-bride,” to mother?), and smolder with observation (“blistered shingles,” “pillowed hammer”) through “remembering like lightning.” Like “strawberries taken too long with,” these poems bid relish and pause—to read them is to sample the “almond taste of stillness.”
—Flower Conroy, author of Zoodikers: A Bestiary
About the Author
Ellen Devlin is the author of two chapbooks: Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET, both published by Ĉervená Barva Press. Her recent work has appeared in The Coachella Review, The Amethyst Review, Mom Egg Review, RockPaperPoem, Beyond Words, and The Westchester Review, among others.
Publication Date: June 15, 2025
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-04-8
Ellen Devlin’s poems are “strangers with notes in their hands.” The Light of Small Ones Blinking is composed in masterful bursts of visions: past lives, the past itself, and places we may or may not have been. Dedicated to the poet’s grandchildren, this collection is an offering of the highest kind, one that acknowledges darkness that exists and continues through it. Devlin’s writing is urgent. She wants us to brace ourselves for survival, for the aftermath of “wet family photos on your desk.” The sentiment is crushing, but regardless of shadows, joyful light reenters in “the railroad builders, fishermen, laundry / baskets carried through Arles by wet-wash boys, / carpenters, cooks, and artists.” While we will all become “ghosts at the edge/of place,” Devlin reminds us, children’s “sneakers tread, the light of / small one’s blinking.”
Praise for Ellen Devlin & The Light of Small Ones Blinking
Reading The Light of Small Ones Blinking is like walking briskly past a life and catching glimpses through a slatted fence, or like a landscape of memory illuminated by successive flashes of lightning. These honed and startling poems offer up images of the past as talismans for the women who touch them: “a ladderback chair’s measured spaces,” the “presser foot and throat plate” of an old Singer sewing machine, telephone booths that “stood on street corners like risky / invitations, glass-walled, upended coffins.” Object by object, channeling Nora or Rita or Missouri or Anna, each poem bespeaks the well-practiced vigilance and seasoned humor of one who has done, over and over, the work of care: “I have searched this bus and there are no sleeping children.” This book offers the breadth of biography sliced as thin as possible, starting all the way back where “Before is a child swinging on a gate.” Then the during, the long middle after innocence, is a dress: whether excavated from humble closet or high fashion, for Devlin the dress is a figure that stands in for the shape and weather of women’s days, their devotions and departures. As for after, I’ll let you discover the chilling final poem of that name, a poem that heaves the weight of fate over the threshold of the uncanny, for yourself. I’d know an Ellen Devlin poem anywhere—a rare, keen, singular voice.
—B.K. Fischer, author of Ceive & others
There’s as much to be gleaned from what’s said as what’s left unsaid in Ellen Devlin’s The Light of Small Ones Blinking. Part Valentine and Tate, Glück and Ruefle—but wholly Delvin’s—these Janus-faced, chiseled capsules of “scattermoon” catalogue obsoletion (manually-operated elevators, pay phone booths), upend expectations (what does it mean to be the “anti-bride,” to mother?), and smolder with observation (“blistered shingles,” “pillowed hammer”) through “remembering like lightning.” Like “strawberries taken too long with,” these poems bid relish and pause—to read them is to sample the “almond taste of stillness.”
—Flower Conroy, author of Zoodikers: A Bestiary
About the Author
Ellen Devlin is the author of two chapbooks: Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET, both published by Ĉervená Barva Press. Her recent work has appeared in The Coachella Review, The Amethyst Review, Mom Egg Review, RockPaperPoem, Beyond Words, and The Westchester Review, among others.
Publication Date: June 15, 2025
Paperback, 80 pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-04-8
Ellen Devlin’s poems are “strangers with notes in their hands.” The Light of Small Ones Blinking is composed in masterful bursts of visions: past lives, the past itself, and places we may or may not have been. Dedicated to the poet’s grandchildren, this collection is an offering of the highest kind, one that acknowledges darkness that exists and continues through it. Devlin’s writing is urgent. She wants us to brace ourselves for survival, for the aftermath of “wet family photos on your desk.” The sentiment is crushing, but regardless of shadows, joyful light reenters in “the railroad builders, fishermen, laundry / baskets carried through Arles by wet-wash boys, / carpenters, cooks, and artists.” While we will all become “ghosts at the edge/of place,” Devlin reminds us, children’s “sneakers tread, the light of / small one’s blinking.”
Praise for Ellen Devlin & The Light of Small Ones Blinking
Reading The Light of Small Ones Blinking is like walking briskly past a life and catching glimpses through a slatted fence, or like a landscape of memory illuminated by successive flashes of lightning. These honed and startling poems offer up images of the past as talismans for the women who touch them: “a ladderback chair’s measured spaces,” the “presser foot and throat plate” of an old Singer sewing machine, telephone booths that “stood on street corners like risky / invitations, glass-walled, upended coffins.” Object by object, channeling Nora or Rita or Missouri or Anna, each poem bespeaks the well-practiced vigilance and seasoned humor of one who has done, over and over, the work of care: “I have searched this bus and there are no sleeping children.” This book offers the breadth of biography sliced as thin as possible, starting all the way back where “Before is a child swinging on a gate.” Then the during, the long middle after innocence, is a dress: whether excavated from humble closet or high fashion, for Devlin the dress is a figure that stands in for the shape and weather of women’s days, their devotions and departures. As for after, I’ll let you discover the chilling final poem of that name, a poem that heaves the weight of fate over the threshold of the uncanny, for yourself. I’d know an Ellen Devlin poem anywhere—a rare, keen, singular voice.
—B.K. Fischer, author of Ceive & others
There’s as much to be gleaned from what’s said as what’s left unsaid in Ellen Devlin’s The Light of Small Ones Blinking. Part Valentine and Tate, Glück and Ruefle—but wholly Delvin’s—these Janus-faced, chiseled capsules of “scattermoon” catalogue obsoletion (manually-operated elevators, pay phone booths), upend expectations (what does it mean to be the “anti-bride,” to mother?), and smolder with observation (“blistered shingles,” “pillowed hammer”) through “remembering like lightning.” Like “strawberries taken too long with,” these poems bid relish and pause—to read them is to sample the “almond taste of stillness.”
—Flower Conroy, author of Zoodikers: A Bestiary
About the Author
Ellen Devlin is the author of two chapbooks: Rita and Heavenly Bodies at the MET, both published by Ĉervená Barva Press. Her recent work has appeared in The Coachella Review, The Amethyst Review, Mom Egg Review, RockPaperPoem, Beyond Words, and The Westchester Review, among others.