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Amazon Book Description

Stepping beyond conventions,in Gunilla’s Garden Sterling Warner fondly reexamines relationships and heart wrenching explorations of lifetime convictions once viewed with philosophic distance but now seen through the lens of loss where renewed longing finds solace among strangers, as well as memories that never fade.

Praise for Gunilla’s Garden: Poetry

“Heavenly hands push starshine across the galaxy.” In this stunning collection of verse, the poet uses evocative images that invite us to follow him as he observes, studies, and describes the natural rhythm and order of the universe, and how we humans fit into it. He reminisces about life cycles—his own birth, childhood, maturing, aging. He mourns the death of “the love of his life” and foresees his own dying. In doing so, he succeeds in enticing all of us to confront and study our own mortality. This is a journey not to be missed. 

—Nancy Wambach: English Professor, Writer

Warner’s poems are not meant to be read, they are meant to be felt, to be experienced as a flow of thought that teases you along like a leaf on a river. Carefully chosen words and phrases guide you like an invitation to see what Warner sees in his heart and imagination. The effect is unlike most of the poetry that I read, and I find myself whispering «let go and see where the images take you.» When he writes «Quixotic dreams disturb restful slumber / I cling to Michelle Pfeiffer’s ebon jersey / as we tumble into mustard green fields» he is introducing me to a new Pfeiffer, one I never met, but would like to. Read these poems with your mind open to a kaleidoscope of emotion and wonder. You won’t be sorry.

—Jim Lewis: Verse-Virtual Editor; author of all these things are broken

Sterling Warner’s poetry  in general and Gunilla’s Garden in particular is an embrace of Whitman’s multitudes and exquisite close-ups;  his mastery of rendering images and character sketches from towns, landscapes, city vibes, gardens—all portraits—offer simple inviting details that engage the reader with his voice of wonder and curiosity. Through pain and pleasure, this poet enables all our worlds and possibilities to collaborate—these observations that offer us empathy, compassion and concern. 

—Tobey Kaplan: Poet, Author of ritual desire: recent and selected poetry

Review of Gunilla’s Garden: Poetry by Sterling Warner

Review Written by Rose Anna Higashi

Gunilla’s Garden, Sterling Warner’s eleventh volume of poetry, will stun you with its breathtaking variety of people, places, emotional ups and downs, fast-paced imagery and variety of literary forms, from free verse to sonnet to cadralor and Fibonacci. Warner’s tireless creativity, inspired by his years as a professor of World Mythology and Literature, draws the reader into an intense poetic journey that melds the simple beauty of star viewing with the complexity of the ancient world of myth and mystery. Grounded in his upbringing in San Jose California and his move to the Hood Canal area of coastal Washington, Warner’s intense attention to visual and auditory detail invites the reader to join him in his daily adventures, both simple and profound.

Generous in his use of similes as well as allusions, from Zeus himself to Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi and Lady Macbeth, but never a literary snob, Warner revels in remembering the El Rancho Drive-In of his youth, wading in the mud of Purdy Creek and poking around in his grandmother’s cedar chest. His readers will feel that they have been somewhere specific in time and space, met someone real, experienced an era in human history or embarked on a mythic journey filled with gods and goddesses whose names and purposes still matter.

Interestingly, fourteen of the poems in Gunilla’s Garden are about specific women, Grace, Kiera, Selena, Carrie and others, each artfully described to reveal each woman’s unique character and aura:

Dana styled her hair

Like a stellar jay’s

Feather crest—pointed

Royal, elegant, bold;…

Dana’s self-discovery thrived

Under firefly luminescence.

With never a hint of judgment or condescension, Warner as a poet is a friend to women, and the last woman, discussed in several poems in the final section of Gunilla’s Gardn, is Warner’s wife, Carole. Here we meet her as the love of his life and the hidden unifying archetype for this entire volume of poetry. We come to know this remarkable woman before her engagement to Sterling, during their forty years together in a tiny rental house in San Jose, her illness after their move to the beautiful Washington coastline, and her death after an extended time in a coma. The final poems open the door to the reader to share Warner’s journey of grief. In “Owning My Apocalypse,” influenced by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Warner concludes:

Loyal to my nightmare, alone, I perpetually relive

My personal Ragnarök, every time I

Awake without Carole, my love, beside me.

“The horror! The Horror!”

With his readers beside him, Sterling is not alone.

Paperback

Author Biography

Washington-based author, poet, educator, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in such magazines, journals, and anthologies as Verse-Virtual, Ekphrastic Review. Warner’s poetry/fiction include Rags and Feathers, Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Edges, Memento Mori, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps: Poems, Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction, Halcyon Days: Collected Fibonacci, Abraxas: Poems, Gunilla’s Garden: Poems (2025)—as well as Masques: Flash Fiction & Short Stories.  He currently writes, hosts “virtual” poetry/fiction readings, and enjoys fishing along the Hood Canal.