Winner of the 2019 WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest Textured with musical reference and rich imagery, Fugue for a New Life is skillfully rendered into a series centered on the archetypical story of loss and self-discovery with travel woven in as part of the quest for a new life. The intelligent and wide-ranging voice of these poems portrays intimate scenes against the backdrop of the infinite. In her final poem, Berland arrives, after a final litany of the possible, at a wise and brilliant conclusion, "that everything came / from the same infinitesimal seed," thus "proving" our inevitable connection to each other. --Tami Haaland, author of What Does Not Return "The rhythmic river of imagery that flows through Fugue for a New Life immerses readers in a world so vivid, I often found my body pulsing with the electricity of life's diverse expression, which these poems reveal, and could hardly catch my breath. Dinah Berland's poetry is just that compelling, that good. There is a discerning and fearless passion here, a native and nuanced music of what it means to give oneself wholly to the life one's been given--even during times of great sorrow or loss--matched by a spiritual vision that brings repair, for this is a poet who means to see things through, and never back away. Above all, perhaps, this is the true signature of Berland's human genius and poetic gift." --Peter Levitt, author of One Hundred Butterflies