Through the Kaleidoscope

In a kaleidoscope, the pieces of color and light go wherever they will.  In Carey Link’s Through the Kaleidoscope, feelings tend to precede understanding. In a quiet “fold” and “shifting,” Link guides her reader through the sensually known realities of this world, such as bittersweet chocolate-raspberry. However, these concrete pieces are not a permanent destination. The link takes one further into her poetic imagination, primarily through the abstract in which the concrete images move. Like the kaleidoscope, Link does not layout for the reader what mystery exists in the multi-colored lights.  We must find it for ourselves, in her “rounded puffs of breath,” “the colors of a whisper,” “the ghost” we must let go Carey Link lives in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2008, she graduated with a B.A. in psychology from the University of Alabama, Huntsville. She is living with Cerebral Palsy.  In 2017, two years after developing metastatic breast cancer, she medically retired from sixteen years working in civilian personnel and Equal Employment Opportunity as a civil servant on Redstone Arsenal. Coping with her disabilities has taught Carey patience and gratitude.  She has never stopped moving forward and is working toward an M.S. in counseling at Faulkner University. After she completes her degree, her goal is to work with clients living with life-altering illnesses or conditions. Carey’s poems have previously appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Hospital Drive, Poem and elsewhere. In 2011, her poetry sequence titled, What it Means to Climb a Tree, was released by Finishing Line Press and in 2017 her poetry collection,  Awakening to Holes in the Arc of Sun (Mule on a Ferris Wheel) was awarded second place in the Alabama State Poetry Society Book of the Year contest. Carey’s forthcoming chapbook, I Walk a Frayed Tightrope Without a Safety Net, will be released by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Carey enjoys mentoring emerging writers with disabilities through The Handy, Uncapped Pen online program.