At its core this is a book about the entirely human path to responsibility and personal accountability. From a very early age the author parents emphasized self-sufficiency, doing him an immense favor that parents rarely bestow upon their children today.
Ghost Tones: A Review of Diane Mehta’s Tiny Extravaganzas
I found myself first reading Mehta’s poems on a sunny, hot, false summer October day and listening to my neighbor’s music that swirled up and over my fence and into my yard. It was strange music–ghostly.
A review of Wild Pack of the Living by Eileen Cleary
In this tale of humans gone wrong, and the powerful presence of the natural world as witness, the flowers do not cloy; they arrive, watch, and listen—plants accompany, then entrap. “Dog lilies and the larkspurs may have heard.” “Day lilies escort us.” “downed pines trap me.”
A review of Getting to Know Death: A Meditation by Gail Godwin
She jumps back and forth, including a scholarly essay, poems and sayings by literary figures, and tributes to significant people in her life, both past and present. Indirectly, she offers suggestions as to how to handle our loved-ones’ deaths, and ultimately, our own.
A review of Tight Bindings by Sarah Temporal
The poems pivot around the birth of a daughter, expanding outward from child to woman to humanity to universe and back again to the daughter. A cycle that repeats itself, Fibonacci-like throughout the book, utilising fairy tales, legend, place, and experience to create an overarching story of female transformation that feels simultaneously intimate and mythic.
A review of Voyage to the Sun by Ruth Ann Oskolkoff
There are some cultural barriers to be overcome to understand Taoism, the moral way. It is difficult to grasp, the essense is too good to be true, and coming to practicing Tao it is difficult. With such hurdles, thinking about bringing these philosophical values to the level where a child could understand and accept it, is indeed a daunting task.
Six questions to Ruth Oskolkoff, Author of Voyage to the Sun
The author of Voyage to the Sun: The Tao te Ching For Children talks about her own childhood, her minimalist style of writing, the Tao and how it fits our present world, on preparing children for the real world, her family support, and more.
The Shifting of the Possibilities of the World: a review of Xiao Yue Shan’s then telling be the antidote
Shan’s “city” is also the family, nature, love, time, dreams, reality. Place (the literal, physical city) is important, and travel among these physical realities is part of the dynamic Shan writes about in these poems—otherness, newness, migration—but these are not poems of leisure and repose, and place is just one of the elements.
A review of Take Me With You Next Time by Janis Hubchman
Hubschman has a close style with a mixture of tenses, one that always stays close to the mind of the woman whose story this is. She tends to chew to the pith with brief character descriptions: “…Nina was at least a half-foot taller than Joy with dark cropped hair and fashionable chunky-framed glasses”.
A review of Manuali’i by Rex Letoa Paget
What I appreciated most about this book was the richness of the poetry with its combination of striking imagery, profound thoughts, subtle spirituality and cultural complexity.