Walking Wheel
“Molly Fisk reminds us what poetry can do, put to the service of Story.”
—Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses and The Jump-Off Creek
Walking Wheel is a tender, lyrical portrait of pioneer love and labor that revives the quiet heroism of everyday life in 1875, where intimacy, resilience, and devotion shape the story of home.
In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and timeless.
Fisk describes the journey of newlyweds Phoebe and Miles Imlay from their birthplace in central Oregon to California’s Surprise Valley. These are quiet, lyrical poems building a private world of intimacy and effort in alternating voices. From sawing timber, turning the heel of a sock, and measuring a pie’s baking with verses of a song, through sex, pregnancy, and childbirth, the couple’s first year of marriage working side by side is offered to us in resonant, unexpected detail.
Captivating and accessible, by turns tender, funny, erotic, and surprising, Walking Wheel chronicles a self-sufficient era that some only half-remember and many find hard to believe. With these linked poems, Fisk brings a measure of balm and solace to our often fraught, overwhelming times.
$19.95
Getting to the heart of who we are…
Molly Fisk’s great gift is the ability to communicate and inspire a kind of radiant joy.
— Claudia Mills
Welcome! I’m Molly Fisk: poet, essayist, radio commentator, radical life coach. I write as openly and personally as I can about many subjects including love, death, grammar, small towns, lingerie, and the natural world. I was the inaugural Poet Laureate of Nevada County, CA, and an inaugural-year Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
My work is aimed at getting to the heart of who I am. That’s what I want for you, too. A distillation or paring away until you reach your essence. My life coaching comes out of the Radical Feminist Psychiatry and Transactional Analysis traditions, blended by Julia Kelliher into a practice called Skills for Change. I also help poets and short-form essayists polish their work.
Spending time with me will get you laughing, crying, and thinking. Look around the website and see how you’d like to connect.
photo by Ingrid Nelson
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It’s all about the book. See Calendar link, below.
Books
Coaching
I’m a certified Skills for Change Life Coach who runs groups and sees individuals, couples, and families privately. I hold an MBA from Simmons College Graduate School of Management and have run small businesses in the retail, financial, and creative sectors since 1978.
