Review When you go back to the place of your people, you can be diminished, or you may look so fiercely into the stuff of your origin that you are magnified. You may not escape unscathed, but what if you willingly submit to the friction of deep recall? In Rapid Redemption, Kay Reid circles back to get the lore, and with an eye for detail so textured it sings, she brings us deep into the everyday wonders of her land of beginning.Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Crafts. Stafford is Poet Laureate of Oregon, 2018 – 2020. Kay Reid’s new book Rapid Redemption is, frankly, dazzling. It shines a bright white light–honest, naked, close-up glimpses of the South, boots to the ground. We go to Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee. Reid’s language is more than photographic. It’s three-dimensional. It puts us right where she is. There. I’ve never been to the South. After reading Reid’s book, now I have.  It’s Baptist country. Elvis country. Rhubarb country. Taffeta with sweat soaking through country. White suede shoes. Copperheads and rat snakes and bourbon. Erlis and Birdie Lee. Captain Love and Reverend Hill. Reid delights with absurdist humor throughout: they both had important wavy hair / and that helped. // Patti Sit / Was reincarnated into password / in the twenty-first century // William and I converted to cats when we were in our 20s / about the same time we converted to Martin Buber; and random sparkles of poetic technique—Dr. William Hart / lept, wept, slept. Rapid Redemption is a wonderful ride at once precisely visual, emotionally stirring, psychologically thrilling, and lyrically masterful. Reid takes us on a ride that swoops so close, we get to see. Brother Braswell / fresh from seminary / wore eloquent tortoise shell spectacles. / his pleas to the pews could dazzle / Dolce and Gabanna velvet collection / comes to mind. Ditto Reid’s new book. Dazzling.Leanne Grabel is a writer, illustrator, performance poet,  semi-retired special education teacher, and co-founder of Portland’s  poetry fount of the 90s, Cafe Lena. Grabel’s collection of illustrated  prose poems, Gold Shoes, was just published by Finishing Line Press (April 2018) About the Author Kay Reid has spent the past 45 years chronicling her surrounds in poetry, journals, articles. She has been the professional oral historian for several projects in the Pacific Northwest, including Portland State's Great Tribal Leaders of Modern Times. Today she teaches ESL and citizenship preparation to residents of her North Portland neighborhood. In the eighties, Kay spearheaded several efforts to help Oregon writers put their work into the world, during which time she also wrote, spoke, and performed poetry. After decades of documenting the stories of others, it is now her big job and her great passion to share more of her own written work with the world.