Fascinated by what emerges from unlikely sources when absorbed into memory, Gale Marie Thompson’s poems delight in what remains: John Wayne, Bewitched, turnip fields, camellias and canned figs, and—of course—kitchens. Soldier On uses the light of the kitchen as a starting (and ending) point to explore remembered spaces, which take on new facets and textures in a flood of associations and the mind’s endless cross-indexing. Inside a world of objects, people, and artifacts, Soldier On constructs the language in which we love and lose love.

Gale Marie Thompson is the author of Soldier On (Tupelo Press, 2015) and Helen or My Hunger (YesYes Books, 2020). She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work appears in American Poetry Review, Tin House Online, Gulf Coast, Guernica, BOAAT, and Crazyhorse, among others. She is the founding editor of Jellyfish Magazine, and she lives, writes, and teaches in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You can find her on Twitter at @thegalester.