Post by shayepoet on Aug 8, 2008 7:41:35 GMT 2
Scattered Showers In a Clear Sky
Anne Higgins
Scattered Showers In a Clear Sky refers to birds migrating , but it
applies to the themes of the poems as well.
Sample poem:
Fabricating
The clothing did not fall from you in tatters,
nor did your feet swell these 40 years.
The Goodwill store sells everything that matters.
Forget the Lord and Taylor, all your fears
are smothered in the well worn corduroy
The warm grey sweater sent to you with love
Each time you wear it I can feel your joy.
Reject stiff clothing, that which does not give,
the labels biting back into the neck.
the slippery polyester you once wore.
Embrace the blouse so fine it feels like silk.
The cotton blouse whose ironing was a chore.
Choose vibrant reds and purples from the rack.
Discover cashmere that the rich gave back.
Raves and reviews for Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky:
“The woman welcomed the wet of it to her house” Anne Higgins write in a poem about the inundation of rain. Reading this volume, I see how that line characterizes the voice of Higgins’ work, that of a poet finding her place in the world, assessing and accepting it with wonder and a kind of Buddhist patience. The themes an topics include nature, youth and aging, language, art, death, and weather, all largely couched in the familiar world of goodwill coats, houses, schoolgirls, junk-drawer junk, tools, maps and animals. Among it all, what strikes me most in these poems is the poet’s sympathy with both the living and the inanimate, and an unshaken sense of humanity."
--Sarah Sloat
"Scattered showers are always welcome from too clear a sky. The poems here offer the continuing relief of the bit of fanciful yet renewing reality poetry can bring — and does, with wonderful regularity in this book. Higgins gives us "Nature's palpable design" in a kaleidoscope of images: a dozen or so poems of birds writing their own ineffable designs on the world; the glories of a "Junk Drawer"; the closely observed material word of locks and their openings. Images everywhere that bring us home -- "Women with feet like cudgels"; the way "the sun crept up and turned its key in my face" and, always the affirming grace: "After all, I turn to grinning."
Beautifully realized images, tightly captured senses that gravitate toward the "molten core," our own clipped wings seeking anyway the sky, this is a book worth revisiting again and again. Let us have more of these scatterings."
--Martin Galvin, Ph.D., teacher, author of Wild Card, winner of the Columbia Prize for poetry in 1989
"This collection is rich with image and emotion. Moving back and forth between the natural world and the sphere of human endeavors, the poet finds the connections between them, whether ironic or tender. No easy answers, but a voice to accompany us all as we travel our own paths."
Deborah Humphreys, poet and author of Conventional Wisdom
"Anne Higgins' poetry is wonderfully genuine. With attention to detail, and a simple honesty of emotion, she invites the reader into her work to become part of the creative process, to make it their own. It is impossible to read Anne's work without feeling that connection to it and wanting more.
--Lisa Prince, poet and moderator of Inside the Writers Studio
About the author:
Anne Higgins teaches at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg
Maryland. She is a member of the Daughters of Charity. She has had about
ninety poems published, in Yankee, Commonweal, Spirituality and Health, The
Melic Review, The Centrifugal Eye, and a variety of small magazines. Her
poem, “The Daruma Doll,” was published in Letters to the World-Poems from
the WOM-PO Listserv, in 2008.
Her first book of poetry, At the Year’s Elbow, was published by the Mellen
Poetry Press in 2000, and republished by Wipf and Stock in 2006. Her second
book of poetry, Scattered Showers in a Clear Sky, was published by Plain
View Press in 2007, and her third, a chapbook called Pick It Up and Read, is
being published now by Finishing Line Press. Her blog can be found at
annesbirdpoems.blogspot.com.
ISBN # 978-1-891386-81-7
Plain View Press, 2007, 101 pages, $14.95
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