“Wise, funny, quirky, poignant novel… palpable yearning for love that you will feel in your gut”

“Can this wise, funny, quirky, poignant novel really be Dale Kushner’s debut? She got everything just right—characters who you will never forget and a palpable yearning for love that you will feel in your gut. Bravo!”

—Ann Hood, The Stolen Child

"Amazing sense of character… an immaculately written, enthralling, and passionate debut”

“Kushner has an amazing sense of character and not only her heroine, the fearless Eunice, but everyone the Eunice encounters comes vividly to life as she struggles first to accommodate herself to her mother’s tumultuous feelings and then to make her own way in the world. An immaculately written, enthralling, and passionate debut."

—Margot Livesey, The Road from Belhaven

“A journey through realms of soul… Kushner’s passionate dedication to the deep mysteries of love in all times and places”

“M takes us on a journey through realms of soul on the paths of desire, sorrow, and transformation. It is a strong distillation of the poet's passionate engagement with fate and destiny and a fine distillation of Dale Kushner’s passionate dedication to the deep mysteries of love in all times and places. Be brave—drink, and savor! The poems will take your breath away!"

—Murray Stein, Jung’s Map of the Soul

“Language rich with gorgeousness… one could bathe all day in the deliciousness of this book”

“From Eve to Mary Magdalene and through all her configurations, Dale Kushner’s M pulls us through the horrors of history in language rich with gorgeousness where ‘ugliness is a city of miserable thought’ and ‘even the forsythia wears a yellow star.’ Of personal loss and pain, the usual tropes of the poet, she flings us the ‘looping brain / trapped in its cycle of desperate / repair’ to save us. Never mind Adam and the latest Hollywood hunk, here we have the true poet’s real paramour: language. One could bathe all day in the deliciousness of this book.”

—Alice Friman, Blood Weather

“A book of spiritual reckoning and superb artistry… a marvelously cohesive collection”

“Dale Kushner’s M is a book of spiritual reckoning and superb artistry, reminiscent of Rilke’s great New Poems volumes. Beginning with revisionist retellings of the Expulsion and the life of Mary Magdalene, the collection then circles outward to include a wide array of monologues and character studies as well as some moving elegies for the author’s father. M also is a marvelously cohesive collection, unified by its empathy, by the power of its witnessing, and by its devotional ardor. As Kushner writes in the closing poem, ‘This wasn’t the underworld. I was ascending /and everything demanded an upward gaze.’”

—David Wojahn, For The Scribe

“Inventive substance and form… a rare experience of mysticism”

“Dale Kushner’s remarkable M transports us into the regions of the underworld and overworld where desire’s destructive and generative impulses cannot be suppressed. The inventive substance and form of these poems is startling, satisfying at all times: there are poems here of ‘mad prayer’ and of fabular horror/wonder and of stinging remembering and of outcry and of despairing questioning. M’s three sections, ‘Via Desiderio,’ ‘Via Dolorosa,’ and ‘Via Transformativa,’ build in intensity, offering a rare experience of mysticism. This book of poems is, to say it simply, absolutely original.”

—Kevin McIlvoy, One Kind Favor

“Passion and perception… her depth and experience surface through her writing as a wise companion to help us on our way”

“Dale Kushner is a remarkable mix of passion and perception. As a storyteller, she has the ability to let the mysterious force of life show itself through the smallest piece of dirt or doubt. Her depth and experience surface through her writing as a wise companion to help us on our way.”

—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening