“Is anything common?” Katherine Gekker asks in her debut collection, In Search of Warm Breathing Things. The answer, in these richly detailed poems, is no. Gekker is a keen observer, able to “unlock the beauty hidden” in the ordinary. An iridescent grackle becomes a symbol of hope, “collarbones shimmer like wings.” Weaving images of the natural world with glimpses of a struggling marriage, Gekker portrays life in all its emotional complexity. “Two bees are fighting or courting — I can’t tell which,” she writes in “To Cast a Shadow Again.” Yet there are moments of joy, the promise of transformation. “My shift billows, diaphanous…. I can seduce anyone tonight beneath fronds slicing like blades.”

                         — Ellen Bass, author of Indigo

 In these pages, Katherine Gekker tackles the emotional truths with "passion, a rutting need to run" line by line, poem by poem. With formal dexterity, an eye for language, and a rueful shake of the head at the human capacity for hope in the face of heartache, the poems of In Search of Warm Breathing Things mark a promising debut. 

                         — Gerry LaFemina, author of The Story of Ash 

Katherine Gekker has such a deft and musical touch with language that the most profound and aching moments in this book may catch you by surprise. Then you realize you are in the hands of a master of balance. No matter how dark the material here, the author’s wise and lyrical voice is a kind of assurance, a precious reminder that the beauty all around us is worth celebrating, even as it falls away.  

            — Rose Solari, author of The Last Girl and A Secret Woman