Post by shayepoet on Aug 30, 2008 21:19:23 GMT 2
The Dream of Leaving
Sharon Leiter
A finalist in the Main Street Rag 2007 national poetry competition, Leiter's second book of poems explores
the wonders of maturity: the mysteries of owning a body and relinquishing it, of "losing everyone older or frailer"
and figuring out how to hold on to them, of wishing for distances and burrowing into
a house, of desire unleashed and desire modified. Passionately restrained, honest, and artful, these poems show
Leiter as a master of le mot juste and the unsettling,
unexpected metaphor.
Sample poem:
The Dream of Leaving
It was a life.
The waking and sleeping,
the slow train journeying
over the mountain, steaming
again and again into still,
pleasant stations
whose name-plates told us
we lived what
we'd never planned.
And endless brave
mornings when we'd go
again, only to learn
how space is curved
to the contours
of the Mobius fate
that returned us
at nightfall
to the old house,
the dream of leaving,
the hours that sucked us,
moth-like, into each other's
arms and eyes and mouths.
I cannot wrap
these fourteen years
going on fifteen
going on infinity
into a gala package
for God's eyes,
saying, this we did,
it wasn't enough, this is gone.
I cannot become
that camera
that snaps us in
terrible poses
for future museums
to sort and discard.
I'd rather stay
sunk with you here
in the great animal fate,
the tall grass around us,
the summer smells,
the orchestra of insects,
longing for where we are,
going wherever we go next.
Praise and reviews for The Dream of Leaving:
“With lyric grace and daring imagery the poet proves that to dance on the edge of the razor is to be fully alive: facing the paradox of time’s fragile strand and the half-life shine of lasting love. Each poem glows like a sickle moon over the sleeper’s dream.”
--Judy Longley
“In The Dream of Leaving, Sharon Leiter explores a territory all her own, questioning and probing with a lyric intelligence that is not easily satisfied or easily dismayed. She can celebrate a woods “never divided/between flowering/and dying,” even as she recognizes her own human fate and that of those she loves as something far more complex, disturbing, and dignified. These poems add their own special grace to that stark recognition.”
--Gregory Orr
"The Dream of Leaving is filled with keenness and surprise. The predominant themes--travel and memory, abandonment and trickery--matter because of their distinct pitch. Listen for how it uncalcifies. These poems awaken and breathe."
--Charlotte Matthews
About the author:
Sharon Leiter is the author of a volume of poetry, The Lady and the Bailiff of Time (Ardis), as well as of two works of literary scholarship, Akhmatova’s Petersburg (University of Pennsylvania Press) and Critical Companion to Emily Dickinson: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work (Facts on File). Her poetry has appeared in Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, The Georgia Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other journals. She has published fiction and essays and was the recipient of a 1990 Virginia Award for Fiction. She serves as poetry editor of Streetlight, a journal of art and literature for Charlottesville and surrounding areas. Leiter has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan and teaches literature at the Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Program at the University of Virginia. She lives in Palmyra, Virginia, with her husband Darryl Leiter, an astrophysicist. Visit her at her website: www.sharonleiter.com.
ISBN: 978-1-59948-085-5, 85 page, $12.00
Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2007
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