Stella Nesanovich‘s work has been an inspiration to me for some years, and I was thrilled when she agreed to provide a blurb for Cloud Song earlier this year.

Today, I want to share with you some of the well deserved accolades she is receiving for her poem, “Everyday Grace,” first published in 2016 in Third Wednesday, (and later as their poem of the week), as well as on the websites of the Poetry Foundation, and  Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.

“Everyday Grace” reminds the reader of what each of us knows in our own particular way: that there is opportunity for a deepening awareness of meaning in each seemingly mundane moment.

Stella Nesanovich , a lifelong Louisianan and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, was born in New Orleans, won degrees from Louisiana State University, and taught English for many years at McNeese State University in Lake Charles. Stella’s body of work is inspiring to me. At once contemplative and vigorously rendered, her poems explore those intersections of daily life, observation and reflection, and deepening understanding while always delivering pleasure of sound and sense coming together in a fresh way. I feel very lucky to know her work and to count her among my treasured “friends of the work.”

LESLIE

Franciscan University of Steubenville Press

Xavier Review Press, 2004

Yellow Flag Press, 2014

Yellow Flag Press, 2015