“The poems in Ana Pugatch’s debut collection of poetry, Engrams, are alert and unwavering in their keen consideration to things spiritual and material. In these poems of travel, the poet is far from home, from the familiar. The attention of her dislocation makes each poem luminous, radiant, vivid, and immediate. The poems—quiet, searching, careful—possess the beautiful, seemingly impossible, and off-kilter balance one finds in a cairn along a pilgrim’s way. The poems seem almost to levitate, to defy gravity with their accuracy, clarity, and mystery.”
—Eric Pankey

“I was immediately drawn to this manuscript by the voice. It’s inviting in its approach—never assuming, never too sharp—and eases us into a world of mystery to the western eye. It’s the voice that shapes the images in the poems—lush and shimmering to the dark and quiet. In short: the poems are real. They are witness to a foreign land where a step forward means a step outside of the confines of luxury, safety even, and into a world that opens itself for the self. Foreign as east to west, as the natural world to the manmade, as life to death. There is no going back. There is no eye for an escape back. Only forward and only witness. And that may be part of the genius of this beautiful collection.”
—Ray McManus