The Tree at the Center

The Tree at the Center

The Tree at the Center is a beautiful debut volume of poetry that is intelligent and sincere in its look at our wilderness mother, indeed our Heavenly Mother, and the language of women. This book breaks through silence and is also full of an honest look at the speaker’s own experience with motherhood. The poems speak about a voice, at this / distant opening in the sky / not of humankind, not of beast or rain, / that breaks my heart / open as Rilke’s birds do (“Horizon”). In that rich language and voice found here we get to experience something both new and familiar and dear. Something that stirs and is wild. In Kathryn’s words: There / is the Mother, on bended knee / in the great mind of the body, / spurring the horses on / and on and on (“Labor”).—Laura Stott, author of In the Museum of Coming and Going Kathryn's visionary verse of landscapes temporal and spiritual invokes a presence deeply needed in Mormon culture--the eminent absent Mother. She reveals the sacred feminine as spiritual survival. In feminist eco-fashion she sees invisible connections between animate and inanimate, the miraculous within mundane. She accepts the challenge of Mormon theology, to translate spirit from materia, as living soul. Her images are aflame, impossible to ignore, arresting attention to awakening the self, body and soul. In the gaps between our molecules she sees electrons marry form and energy, architecture and theology. She finds "the axis of absolute reality" in every moment, by walking an inner landscape to the "cosmic odeum" in the center of our own being. Her facile grasp of poetic technique woos truth from words. Read at your own risk: you will be consumed by the alchemy catalyzed within these pages. -- Maxine Hanks, editor of Women and Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism The Tree at the Center is a beautiful debut volume of poetry that is intelligent and sincere in its look at our wilderness mother, indeed our Heavenly Mother, and the language of women. This book breaks through silence and is also full of an honest look at the speaker's own experience with motherhood. The poems speak about a voice, at this / distant opening in the sky / not of humankind, not of beast or rain, / that breaks my heart / open as Rilke's birds do ("Horizon"). In that rich language and voice found here we get to experience something both new and familiar and dear. Something that stirs and is wild. In Kathryn's words: There / is the Mother, on bended knee / in the great mind of the body, / spurring the horses on / and on and on ("Labor").-- Laura Stott, author of In the Museum of Coming and Going Sonntag's remarkable debut collection is an ode to God the Mother, "Her thousand ears, / Her thousand eyes," a deft weaving of scripture, temple symbology, ecological awareness, and lyricism. The poet rewinds creation's narrative, repositioning the Mother as the Tree at the Center, the womb, the "urtext of women," pregnant fullness and postpartum empty. She knows grief's wolf, yet remains rooted to earth and spans the heavens, "Her thousand branches adorning the long climb / into the milky stars[.]" This book is a welcome and timely contribution to the ongoing, critical work of uncovering the Mother. -- Dayna Patterson, co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry Kathryn Knight Sonntag received a BA in English and a BS in environmental studies from the University of Utah before earning a Master of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from Utah State University. Her thesis focused on the role of the transcendent in landscapes and greatly informs her first collection of poetry, The Tree at the Center  (BCC Press, 2019). Her poems and essays have appeared in many publications, including: Shades: The University of Utah's Literary Magazine ; Wilderness Interface Zone ; Young Ravens Literary Review ; Exponent II ; Psaltery & Lyre ; Segullah ; and Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought . She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband and sons.