About Willing Pioneer
Are you willing to conquer the trails life presents to you?
Willing Pioneer, Linda Duede Starbuck’s debut collection of poetry, centers around traveling life’s many roads----navigating themes of love, grief, aging, adventure, spirituality, and all the detours in between. Her poems share the self-discoveries that result from the exploration of both the external and internal landscapes. Very few pioneers succeed without leaving a piece of themselves along the way. These poems are the markers of Linda’s journey. Each reader is a pioneer walking their own sacred life path—perhaps her story might offer illumination about their own.
Reviews
Linda Duede Starbuck explores cycles of nature to reveal the richly layered transformation of her life’s seasons, from wife to widow, from Arctic Circle to cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Willing Pioneer shares her intimate journey in poetic metaphor, at times stark, often vividly detailed, always honest. Her willingness grows into courage with every page. -Bruce Roseland, President South Dakota State Poetry Society
Musically crafted, with beautiful images and poignant, meaningful themes. You will enjoy this impressive debut book. -Marsha Warren Mittman, Internationally published, award winning poet/memorist/essayist
In Willing Pioneer, Linda Duede Starbuck takes readers on a journey that is part quest, part retreat, and part flight from the past. But pioneering isn’t easy—the speaker of these poems follows her “smoldering trail” forward, from familiar prairie, to the wild Klondike, to the refuge of the Black Hills of South Dakota. Our pioneer keeps moving, beyond memories and longing, blazing a path away from a past that has become “a theatre with an expired lease.” This beautiful collection is travelogue and diary, confession and meditation. The poems give us an unsentimental and uncompromising view of breaking new ground, while giving us the hope that “all the answers lie just beyond visible light.” -Marcella Remund, author of The Sea is My Ugly Twin and The Book of Crooked Prayer (Finishing Line Press)