We're doing pretty good if we can just get out alive

Praise for Adam Oyster-Sands' We're doing pretty good if we can just get out alive

Compelling, accessible, and remarkably honest, We're doing pretty good if we can just get out alive is filled with stark, realistic, personal yet quite universal poems that paint an intimate portrait of identity, interpersonal struggles, loss, nostalgia, family, and the ever-present need for empathy. A vibrant mix of free verse and prose poetry, these poems that explore community, nature, and biography, Oyster-Sands showcases a true talent for imbuing the smallest human details with authenticity and layered meanings. Each poem maps out the human heart in relation to that larger human heart we all share together, in all their internal conflicts, with precision and grace.

-John Sibley Williams, author of Scale Model of a Country at Dawn

Vibrating with reverence and spirit of the Pacific Northwest, this collection of poems is a raw, lyrical eulogy for fated beloveds, sublime landscape, and ephemeral wonder that spans the vastness of time and place. They thaw frozen wells of anticipatory grief as they pluck and pull at the soul, asking us to revel in what is precious and draw nearer to the exquisite simplicity of our moments. Just as these words both defy and succumb to the certainty of endings, they also beckon us to risk, to love, to live.

-Jacque Fitzgerald, singer and songwriter Echo Onda