“Wayne Lee’s stunning and original new work, Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets, is a full-length exploration of loss, using the septet poem (7-lines, including examples of 21 traditional septet forms) as a channel to his inspiration. The book begins with meditations on nature, companionship, aging and the environment, but abruptly becomes a memoir in verse about his wife’s sudden death. These are short exhalations of grief, but also of timelessness and beauty. He generously allows his words to evolve into a broader lament for the planet: birds become totems of consolation and connection. He writes from the edge of a koi pond: Some grief must be drowned in small words and soft sounds. Yet these evocative and insightful septets aren’t just gestures of bereavement, but ruminations on an uncertain future with its mutable landscapes and sudden joys. His poems reveal how Each of us is born one loss at a time.”
—John Macker, author of Belated Mornings and Desert Threnody

“The 80 septets in Dining on Salt capture tender care for an ill spouse and her subsequent death. These are lines of grief and going on. Rather than feeling contained, each septet has space enough to widen into understanding.”
—Lauren Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate and author of In Old Sky

 “Wayne Lee’s  Dining on Salt  is a powerful collection of elegiac, lyric septets. The poems map a journey through caregiving, loss, healing and renewal: “such a small task, so brief the work / to inhale the scent of the world / to savor it and let it go….” Potent with the concision and directness of haiku, Lee’s seven-line form is also expansive enough to carry the weight of grief.  His moving tribute to his late wife shows us a way of moving forward, day by day, poem by poem, toward healing, toward “a window thrown open / all the world blowing through.”
—Alicia Hokanson, author of Perishable World and Mapping the Distance 

“Stepping into Wayne Lee’s septets offers a breath of living. Any loss or regret or grief becomes a burnished gold.”  
—Hiram Larew, author of This Very Much 

“This collection is so exciting and rewarding! Wayne Lee gave himself to the discipline, demands and richness of the septet form, and he invites us to be equally inspired. The research Lee did is impressive, and his well-crafted poems provide insights into the joys and challenges of caregiving. I was deeply touched by his love and vulnerability, his spiritual practices, and his rich poetic sensibilities. This wonderful collection will touch the reader in unexpected ways.” 
—Mary McGinnis, author of See with Your Whole Body

“One of the remarkable septets in Dining on Salt opens on a simple moment: We share this quiet morning space / in peace, the sleeping cat and I.  Images of morning light follow—the cobalt vase, / the purple buds that look a bit like / lilacs, my blue-veined hand—and then this: All I ask is to see, / to breathe inside this mystery. Here, in eighty poems of seven lines each, Wayne Lee’s request is granted. He sees into the mystery of grief and the heartbreak of loss, and shares these shimmering moments with us.”
—David Meischen, author of Caliche Road Poems

“This book is amazing. Your talents as a poet have never seemed sharper, more elegant, piercing and gorgeous. There is so much wisdom. And I love the theme of looking, seeing, the headline bravery of never denying the terror and loneliness that goes with mourning. Seeing it. Looking at it.  This is a book that must be on everyone’s bookshelf. Even if you don’t own a bookshelf.All of us will face what you have faced, but few with such knowledge and wisdom and the words to express the utterly black hole that is grief and how to emerge back into the sunlight.”
—Georgia Jones-Davis, author of The Blue Poodle

“This book of 80 septets, explores love and loss and rebuilding life thereafter. The septets were written in the year Lee’s beloved wife, Alice Rose, died. I probably marked at least half as a favorite. I have picked the book up a few times since finishing, and just found another gem, I know I read it the first few times, but today, it glowed. “Spring, again // Spring is a promise, not a guarantee / The planet shifts on its axis, a wobbling top, // and every day we must learn to stand and walk / again,…” This is a book for everyone who has lost someone they love, or face that loss. You will cry, you will smile, you will learn hope, and love again.”
—Lenora Rain Lee-Good, author of The Bride’s Gate and Other Assorted Writings

“Wayne Lee is a masterful Canadian-American poet based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His latest literary offering, “Dining on Salt”, brings a historically significant poetic form to life, leveraging the ages-old septet to tell a story of spiritual and emotional depth that is at once greatly universal and incredibly personal. Readers will readily respond to Mr. Lee’s brilliant ability to use this short-form poetic canvas to convey deep feeling and the process of loss, grief, and recovery in the wake of the death of his wife, the poet and artist Alice Lee. The latter section of the book puts the septet into the context of literary history, pointing the interested reader towards previous uses of this fascinating poetic format. This lovely book is a profound glimpse into the thinking and feeling nature of a man whose ability to observe and describe the world around him is a joy to behold.
—Keith Carlson, host of “The Nurse Keith Show”