THE TENDER HOUR, poems, 30pp Ballantine's fourth book of poems, THE TENDER HOUR was written following the death of her father (the artist, writer, and circus aficionado Bill Ballantine). These spare lyrical poems speak of loss and love but offer no clear-cut solution to loss - loss, after all, is part of life. Inside their small worlds, you will find a heart breathing, a mind swimming across great chasms. As a poet and as a human, Ballantine is ever hopeful we can as a society act to limit our use of fossil fuels, work for the earth and to support one another with kindness and grace, avoiding an even greater loss -- the loss of our planet. It is possible that art and poetry can open a way to a more compassionate world no longer in need of war. Tia Ballantine is a writer and a painter, born in Peru, who has lived here there and everywhere but has most recently moved to the desert near the Mexican border. Her poems have been published in various literary journals and anthologized in Sam Hamill's POETS AGAINST THE WAR and in WINTER GIFTS, published in Scotland by Happenstance Press.