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ISBN: 978-1-964277-50-9, 90 pages, $15 (+ shipping)
Release Date: November 19, 2025
The Advance Sale Discount on this title has expired. For those who prefer to pay by check, the price is now $19/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412.
Carol Willette Bachofner, poet, photographer, and watercolorist, served as Poet Laureate of Rockland, Maine from 2012 -2016. She is the author of 7 books of poetry, most recently Test Pattern, a Fantod of Prose Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Bachofner’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals, such as Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, The Comstock Review, Cream City Review, as well as in the following anthologies, Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), Enough! (Littoral Books 2020) and Wait (Littoral Books 2021).
Vivid intelligence, empathy, and generosity sparkle in abundance in Carol Bachofner’s poetry. “My pencil” she writes in “On the 8th Day She Woke Up” “seems like a god.” And the poems have a feeling of being touched by divinity in their immaculate and insightful turns. The depth of the poet’s feminism is strong and sustaining, “every girl has seen the forest ignite around her”…”every place I look, women with embers/ready to explode under their feet” she writes, placing before her reader the strength of her steady, graceful language. The capaciousness and large-hearted reach of the poems is felt in every line, always literarily adroit and deeply human, as the poet writes of a friend’s death “Her going, like a poem unfinished/ leaves everything darkened” it is the meeting of words and human heart that make these poems sacred. Bachofner is fearless, confronting sexual assault, divorce, maternal ambivalence and sacred love in poems that understand we are all mortal but poetry continues. Among those poems that will continue, I nominate Carol Bachofner’s brilliant work, these lines alight with energy and vision. We need her voice now more than ever, “don’t cover up your grief,” sings the poet, “You are enough to make your world/ a polished copper vessel struck/ like a singing bowl.” So many of us are secret keepers when we shouldn’t be. Don’t let these poems be a best kept secret – get the word out, celebrate Everywhere I Look, women with embers at their feet. ~Claire Millikin, author of Magicicada
Carol Bachofner says, “Pencil gives me options. Smudge, underline, all edits mine.” And that’s what these beautiful, fierce poems do: smudge the too tight, confining cultural myths, underline the feminine life force that’s been kept hidden in parentheses. All edits hers! In Every Place I Look there is defiant pleasure—abuse and transgression, yes—but mostly an unstoppable urge for life that counters all wounds. This book unlatches secrets and turns shut lips into song. ~Betsy Sholl
This is a book of secrets revealed. Every Place I Look begins with an origin story—a woman looks through “a hole in the clouds.” In these powerful poems, women tell the truth of their inner and untold lives—and each other’s lives. Women and girls name their abusers, choose and decide what they want, who they touch, who they leave, sometimes choosing each other. These poems, dedicated to “the secret keepers,” offer testimony, elegy, and justice. ~Chivas Sandage
Everything started over water:
bows, arrows, winds gathering — pulling
primal ocean into the air, sending
it back in swirls, funnels, swells. At first
nothing but water, and over water, air.
Blue air filled with people. Over water,
a hole in the clouds and a woman
looking through, dreaming and falling.
The fires begin at birth. Slow burn at first,
a flicker against the nursery wall,
growing to an awful blaze by seventeen.
Every girl has seen the forest ignite around her,
must decide whether to run or pick up a hose and fight.
Every place I look, women with embers
ready to explode under their feet.
It wasn’t the serpent who lit the match.
It was a surly god who used fire to set up Eve.
Apples taste so good when they’re roasted.
worked in factories day after day
welding and riveting, assembling
parts for tanks. They lined helmets with cloth,
donated by ladies in their towns, made their own
margarine, served powered eggs at breakfast.
Before women were allowed to serve
in the army, they stayed at home to wait.
They cried at night to spare their children
from the fear of being alone forever.
Everything rationed, even love.
My grandmother’s ration books in a tin box
in my closet — never cashed coupons:
two pounds of coffee, a pound of sugar
owed to her, four cans of beans, two tins
of peaches, the war ended earlier than expected.
She waited and prayed for her four sons
longer than she expected,
her rosary warm and worn fingers,
bargains she tried to make
with her God. Letters home rationed too.
Cousin Hattie’s son remains mulch in a field
in France, friend Elise went insane
when the priest came to her door. Some prayers
get lost or ignored, though surely
every mother’s son should be saved.
The women at home do what they can,
but it is never enough to stop war
before it knocks down your house.
No cigarettes to smoke in the Garden, nothing
to relax her — after. Did Adam groan and roll off,
or did he linger, proclaim her the best I’ve ever had, as if
God had made others of her kind just for him?
Adam believes himself a god, strikes a godly pose
night after night, and surely will not help
with the inevitable too many ill-fated children.
Eve, after, looks at his wrinkled remains, knows
it’s all she’ll get now, knows this serpent
will strike again and again, leave her with the mess.
Adam — clever fool, master of diversion — blames Eve,
complains to his God about the pie she’d served.
All her. I was duped. I’d have eaten asparagus or a salad.
The snake watches with one slit eye
as Eve packs for the trip to nowhere.