Post by moira on May 16, 2008 21:44:01 GMT 2
Breaking the Glass
LouAnn Shepard Muhm[/b]
"LouAnn Muhm’s graceful lyrics often end with a sudden twist of insight that hits the reader like a gust of wind…or a gentle breeze. I am particularly taken by her epigrammatic gems and poems that are Zen-like in their mysterious reflections.
This poet glimpses the spiritual from the corner of her eye and shares the vision with us."
-- Lynn Levin, Imaginarium and Some Questions About Paradise
Sample poem:
Offering
I shy away from transcendence.
--Bill Borden
We all do,
deer in the ditch,
white tails arcing
graceful as we flee
the passing numen,
leaping away
from bright lights
and broad wheels.
Or maybe we stay quiet,
heads down,
grazing,
ignoring that flash
that has passed us by
before.
Some will stand frozen,
make a wrong step,
then, nicked and limping,
bleed into the woods.
But sometimes there is one
who runs headlong
to the road,
sacrificing everything
to get behind
that glass.
Reviews for Breaking the Glass:
"Breaking the Glassis a book of fierce heart and strong hands, glinting recognitions, and hard-won perception. Its many brief, bright shard-poems, especially, cut through surface consciousness, bringing the reader to unexpected and moving comprehension. Vulnerable with longing, fully alive, LouAnn Muhm’s words ring resonantly true."
-- Jane Hirshfield, author of After; Given Sugar, Given Salt;
The Lives of the Heart, and The October Palace
"LouAnn Muhm writes finely honed poems that are spare but never slight, and taut with the truth. Images and metaphors are planted with economy and precision, nurtured, and given the space and time to breathe and develop. Every word is made to pull its weight. There’s deadpan humour and pure joy, too, in a collection filigreed with an involving emotional arc, told in a distinctive voice that’s understated but always gently insistent and humane."
-- Matthew Merrit, author of Troy Town
About the author:
LouAnn Shepard Muhm is a poet and teacher from northern Minnesota. Her poems have appeared in North Coast Review, Lake Country Journal, The Talking Stick, Dust & Fire, Red River Review, Alba, Eclectica, and CALYX and in the anthologies Letters to the World (Red Hen Press), and Uncontained, Writers and Photographers in the Garden and the Margins (Baksun Books). Muhm is the recipient of a 2006 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Poetry and a 2007 Individual Artist Grant from Region 2 Arts Council. She is a staff reviewer for HerCircle E-Zine, and is Poetry Editor at WomenWriters.net. Her chapbook, Dear Immovable, was published in 2006 by Pudding House Press, and her first full-length collection, Breaking the Glass, was published in May, 2008 by Loonfeather Press.
Website: www.louannmuhm.com/
ISBN: 978-0-92614-726-3, 80 pages, $11.95
Tradepaper, Loonfeather Press
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
Available 5/12/08. Link to order form:
Website: www.louannmuhm.com/preorder.pdf
Amazon: tinyurl.com/3jm5zh[/font]