Donna Isaac, an English and writing teacher in Mendota Heights, Minnesota and a published poet, lives on an Inver Grove Heights’ pond with her husband Matt. Raised in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, her work encompasses both the Southern and Midwestern landscapes. Her poetry capstone Sustenance received Outstanding Poetry Thesis 2007 from Hamline University. She continues to write and publish works.
Tommy, an elegiac chapbook, celebrates and mourns a younger brother who died young. Using varied poetic forms, landscape, and memory, poet Donna Isaac takes the readers through a personal and yet universal journey of grief and acceptance. Each poem represents a step that a sister must take to understand that both suffering and joy are necessary for an authentic life. Using imagery of the natural world as touchstones in many of the poems, Isaac connects the beauty of beach, mountain, and flower with the beauty that was her brother.
Holy Comforter, a collection of 31 poems reflects a childhood steeped in memories of growing up in Southern landscapes, including the attending of Catholic elementary schools. Lyrically, we hear both the voice of the child as well as the adult writer. Weaving together small snapshots of the people and places long gone with new-found discoveries of spirituality, Holy Comforter resonates with vivid and sometimes startling imagery; varying forms; and a mixture of the comic and the tragic.
The cover art, "Flow" is by artist Cynthia Starkweather-Nelson.