Post by shayepoet on Jul 3, 2008 5:19:55 GMT 2
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Qin Warriors and Other Poems
Joyce Nower[/b]
Sample poem:
Especially the Bridges
See these canals, these sidewalks lined with shops
of teak and painted wood, the covered gondola
moored at the water's edge, a floating flower,
but especially the bridges like arched eyebrows
inspecting jewelry or a face for usefulness,
designed with small steps so that the empress
and her ladies could glide over as they browsed
in this ode to arbitrary power
where she built her own mandala,
her sky-high palace-shrine, then a lake and steps
all perfectly placed to catch whatever air gusts.
Oh! to command the wind with the tax dollar,
with naval money, to force it to blow forever
on you in Beijing's torpid summers, roused
by an intrigue or two, and on the stone boat, picnics.
Review for Qin Warriors and Other Poems:
"A sharp and haunting connection between past and present, a number of Ancient Chinese personalities, each presented in a burning reality, which bears light on their all too human lives, the relics of an ancient culture that still impresses and impacts others even worlds away -- and will for eternity, is opened by Joyce Nower's newest book of poetry, Qin Warriors and Other Poems, Avranches Press, 2003.
These lines from "Wanli's Legacy" ...."If balance is lost so is irony,/and then, what miniature life and death/can help us overcome ourselves?"
Some of Nower's other poems shows a modern China. "At The Great Wall" ends with the lines: "The human parade almost beautiful/uncoiling over its own cruelties."
The poetry in this 53 page collection has the depth and vision and power of a poet in her prime. It is rare and almost perfect to come away from reading a volume of poetry with a feeling both of discovery and loss, knowing in its completeness, our own inescapable end; and the realization that we too will darken into eternity but for the small temporary chance of light through inspired words.
This is beautifully said in "Signs": "The signs are here,/in the summer letter I have saved./a spidery hand, a mention/of weight loss, of power./life pruned, I thought then,/fragments of faith, a cover./By fall, I knew I was seed,/root, and flower."
Nower takes the reader to Vermont, England, California and other locales in her poetry also, but my deepest trip with the poet in this volume was through the timelessness of its ancient connections; and I ended the journey, somehow feeling humble and small. Some books, you pass on; I recommend this as a book you will keep in your library for a second and third read. You'll have to buy another copy for the friend."
-- Tikvah Feinstein, Editor of Taproot Literary Review and founder of Taproot Writer's Workshop Inc.
About the author:
ISBN 0-9625886-8-7, 53 pages, $5.00
AVRANCHES PRESS, 2003
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Amazon: tinyurl.com/3n2x9t[/font]
Qin Warriors and Other Poems
Joyce Nower[/b]
"A sharp and haunting connection between past and present, a number of Ancient Chinese personalities, each presented in a burning reality, which bears light on their all too human lives, the relics of an ancient culture that still impresses and impacts others even worlds away -- and will for eternity, is opened by Joyce Nower's newest book of poetry,
Qin Warriors and Other Poems, Avranches Press, 2003...."
-- Tikvah Feinstein
Sample poem:
Especially the Bridges
(Empress Wu (654-705) used tax money raised to develop
a navy to build herself a summer palace on a hill, surrounded
by her own shops, a lake, canals, and a symbolic stone "boat"!)
See these canals, these sidewalks lined with shops
of teak and painted wood, the covered gondola
moored at the water's edge, a floating flower,
but especially the bridges like arched eyebrows
inspecting jewelry or a face for usefulness,
designed with small steps so that the empress
and her ladies could glide over as they browsed
in this ode to arbitrary power
where she built her own mandala,
her sky-high palace-shrine, then a lake and steps
all perfectly placed to catch whatever air gusts.
Oh! to command the wind with the tax dollar,
with naval money, to force it to blow forever
on you in Beijing's torpid summers, roused
by an intrigue or two, and on the stone boat, picnics.
Review for Qin Warriors and Other Poems:
"A sharp and haunting connection between past and present, a number of Ancient Chinese personalities, each presented in a burning reality, which bears light on their all too human lives, the relics of an ancient culture that still impresses and impacts others even worlds away -- and will for eternity, is opened by Joyce Nower's newest book of poetry, Qin Warriors and Other Poems, Avranches Press, 2003.
These lines from "Wanli's Legacy" ...."If balance is lost so is irony,/and then, what miniature life and death/can help us overcome ourselves?"
Some of Nower's other poems shows a modern China. "At The Great Wall" ends with the lines: "The human parade almost beautiful/uncoiling over its own cruelties."
The poetry in this 53 page collection has the depth and vision and power of a poet in her prime. It is rare and almost perfect to come away from reading a volume of poetry with a feeling both of discovery and loss, knowing in its completeness, our own inescapable end; and the realization that we too will darken into eternity but for the small temporary chance of light through inspired words.
This is beautifully said in "Signs": "The signs are here,/in the summer letter I have saved./a spidery hand, a mention/of weight loss, of power./life pruned, I thought then,/fragments of faith, a cover./By fall, I knew I was seed,/root, and flower."
Nower takes the reader to Vermont, England, California and other locales in her poetry also, but my deepest trip with the poet in this volume was through the timelessness of its ancient connections; and I ended the journey, somehow feeling humble and small. Some books, you pass on; I recommend this as a book you will keep in your library for a second and third read. You'll have to buy another copy for the friend."
-- Tikvah Feinstein, Editor of Taproot Literary Review and founder of Taproot Writer's Workshop Inc.
About the author:
Joyce Nower is the author of three books of poetry: Year of the Fires (1983), Column of Silence (2001), and Qin Warriors and Other Poems (2003), the last two published by Avranches Press. Her poems and articles have appeared in Slant, GR Review, The Evansville Review, Common Ground, Grasslands Review, Taproot, Terminus, The Raven Chronicles, The American Poetry Journal, and Visions International. She has been the recipient of four successive Artists-in- Communities Awards from the California Arts Council, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. During June of 1999, she gave lectures on contemporary American poetry at Sichuan Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Yanan University in the People's Republic of China. Currently she writes a poetry column called "Intersections" for the on-line magazine The Alsop Review.
ISBN 0-9625886-8-7, 53 pages, $5.00
AVRANCHES PRESS, 2003
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Amazon: tinyurl.com/3n2x9t[/font]