"Jude Nutter's early work is measured and precise, elegiac in its sorrow and love for the natural world. It was no surprise when I found she had homesteaded on Wrangell Island in Alaska for ten years, working the land, watching birds, listening to snow, and writing poems. That quality of solitude, patience and a survivalist's strict attention to detail comes through in her work. Nutter's first collection, Pictures of the Afterlife, explores not only the possibility of the spirit's existence after the death of the body, it also includes poems that look at how we navigate the earthly life after loss, trauma, or any event that realigns our consciousness. To paraphrase Adam Philips, these poems are concerned with what can be done with what is left. And her poetry has continued to expand to include her growing passions and concerns - the power and fragility of the body, the intricacies of the mind, and the capacity of the living heart to heal itself. These are intelligent, mature, hardworking poems that are blessed with clarity and complexity, designed to deepen your experience of this world, and prepare you, with tenderness, for what comes next." Dorianne Laux, Associate Professor of Creative Writing, University of Oregon, Eugene