Flame Dancer

Nancy Fisher's images in Flame Dancer flicker, like the flame in which her personas dance, in a mirror that reflects a montage of past present and future in three dimensions. The darkness against which the characters struggle to fend off death makes experience of her artifice an experience of the dreams in the poets mind. The "hard gemlike flame" burns with the brilliance of artifice as the means to life and the conflict is always with the loss of the spirit that produces the bodiless head of the poet's nightmare. Her poems are an unforgettable and delightful experience.

Robert Reid, author of Stories of the Sky-God



Nancy Fisher finds the magical within the ordinary, the boundless within the constraints of traditional forms. Again and again, she moves gracefully from quotidian to timeless realms in ways that illuminate each. The range of her subjects, interests, and life experiences is rich and vast: family life, world travel; great composers, artists, poets, and saints. This is a book that deserves our attention.

William Ruleman, author of Profane and Sacred Loves



In her newest volume of poetry, Nancy Fisher widens her gaze from Family to Community to The World and finally to God. The poems are carefully crafted, many of them sonnets that put the lie to the rumor that English is a difficult language to rhyme. Whether expressing love through "Cleaning the Gutters" or traveling to Canterbury and thinking of Chaucer ("Pilgrimage"), Fisher creates a world a reader may enter to see, smell, feel, and taste the poet's own experience. A collection of poetry to be savored again and again.

Connie Green, author of The War at Home, Emmy, and Slow, Children Playing