https:\/\/www.finishinglinepress.com\/product\/the-missing-sea-by-kelly-dolejsi\/<\/a>.<\/p>\nDolejsi has lived in Los Alamos since 2003, working at the Los Alamos Monitor, Otowi Station Bookstore, Los Alamos Family YMCA, and En Pointe School of Dance, where she currently teaches ballet. She is also active in Los Alamos Little Theatre, performing this summer in Julius Caesar. Dolejsi received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston.<\/p>\n
Heyen, author most recently of Nature: Selected & New Poems, Diaspora: Fifteen Collections, endorses the collection on the back cover of The Missing Sea.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Kelly Dolejsi fuses her subjects\u2014family, countless shifting selves, her own mind attending itself as it lyrics its way toward momentary closure that will enable her to rest until the next poem\u2014I remained rapt within The Missing Sea,\u201d Heyen wrote.<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cShe is heir to the wildness here (\u2018my own heart \/ gone feral\u2019) that Emerson asked for and Dickinson opened her musical breast & brain to, but at the same time the compression of form in these 14-liners absorbs her concentration as illuminations occur for herself and for us because of her self-imposed boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dolejsi said she is very grateful to Heyen, not only for his \u201cembarrassingly kind blurb,\u201d but for helping her find her place in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeyen taught the first poetry class I ever took,\u201d Dolejsi said. \u201cHe was patient, never talked down to any of us despite his intimidating publishing credentials, and always made me feel like my thoughts mattered. His class is the first place I really felt like I belonged.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Missing Sea begins in a boat without water, \u201csurrounded by nothing,\u201d and throughout the poem series asks, Who am I without my mother?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe death of my mother was one of the hardest things I\u2019ve ever gone through \u2014 that I\u2019m still going through,\u201d Dolejsi said.<\/p>\n
Yet, in the book, presence, not absence, prevails. An abandoned dog finds her valentine. Chickens from an imagist poem spring to life. Antique lamps bring a mother and daughter together.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Missing Sea is about reclaiming oneself after a devastating loss,\u201d Dolejsi said. \u201cIt\u2019s about coming back, or maybe coming forward for the first time. And Jen Jordan\u2019s lovely, child-like drawings capture the feeling perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is Dolejsi\u2019s second book of poems. Her chapbook, That Second Starling, was published by Desert Willow Press in 2018. She has published poetry and fiction in numerous literary journals as well, including North American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Fifth Wednesday, The Hunger, Broken Ribbon, West Texas Literary Review, Junto, Gravel, Dirty Paws, The Hungry Chimera, Joey and the Black Boots, and The Disconnect.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/dolejsi_author.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Kelly Dolejsi<\/p>\n
Dolejsi\u2019s\u00a0poem \u201cLoyalty\u201d was nominated for the Best of the Net, and her contribution to the book, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (edited by William Heyen) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.<\/p>\n
The Captain<\/p>\n
She\u2019s the only child on a boat bloated\u00a0<\/p>\n
with grown-ups. A dumb boat: no water\u00a0<\/p>\n
anywhere, no view at all \u2014 she\u2019s surrounded\u00a0<\/p>\n
by nothing, blank white walls blocking\u00a0<\/p>\n
a horizon, a sun, maybe whales. She wakes<\/p>\n
to a blizzard that has filled the windows\u00a0<\/p>\n
of their ground-floor apartment with snow,\u00a0<\/p>\n
thick and lightless. The dream continues,\u00a0<\/p>\n
or the feeling from it, as she eats oatmeal\u00a0<\/p>\n
in her ruffly blue nightgown. She knows<\/p>\n
there\u2019s a whole world somewhere \u2014 a bike,\u00a0<\/p>\n
a street, a bunch of kids \u2014 that\u2019s been lost.<\/p>\n
Where did it go? Will it come back? Will she\u00a0<\/p>\n
ever again be open and vast and free?<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/jen_jordan_art.jpg\")
An illustration by Jen Jordan in local author Kelly Dolejsi\u2019 book, \u2018The Missing Sea\u2019. Courtesy image<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Missing Sea illustrated by local artist Jen Jordan. Courtesy image COMMUNITY NEWS: \u201cDolejsi\u2019s craft and intuitive genius…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-15021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Dolejsi-Kelly-cover.jpg\")
The Missing Sea illustrated by local artist Jen Jordan. Courtesy image<\/p>\n