Post by shayepoet on Jun 7, 2008 20:11:11 GMT 2
The Islands Project: Poems for Sappho
Eloise Klein Healy
How to find wholeness when confronted with fragmentation-- that was the original question I asked myself many years ago when searching for a "through line" in a lesbian poetic tradition. The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho is a search for that poetic tradition and a conversation with the "received" and "invented" Sappho. I also wanted to explore the lyric poem, to find lightness and song in difficult times. The book is also a record of my mother's fragmentation and death.
Sample Poems:
The Grackle on the Lawn
She wants the blossom.
She wants the seeds in the grass.
She wants the beautiful thing.
She wants to eat.
It’s so simple, she’s like a person.
She wants the beautiful thing.
She wants to eat.
She’s like a person, she wants to live
with that beautiful blossom and she wants to eat.
She flies off with the blossom in her beak.
Hardscape
Say it’s the memory of early mornings
in the shop, the power lift raising a car
in the dawn light, steam lifting off the highway
in front of the garage, and tools
coming to life at the touch of a hand.
Say it’s the clang of things, the ping
of ball bearings pouring into a pan
and then a gush of gas from the pump,
the cleaning rag running over
the steely marbles to spark their shine.
Up the hill, the farm horse’s shoes
tap against the gravel on the road,
the tack clinks and groans, the barn doors
bang and creak and corn stalks screech
against each other in the wind.
Say it made me hanker for hard things,
want to get outdoors first light,
handle sticks and dead tires, bang
old mufflers together and bam
a ball peen hammer against a scrap
of sheet metal behind the shop.
It made me not want dolls and the demands
of indoors—quiet in the parlor, quiet by the stove.
It made me a woman of landscape and weather.
and suspicious of my place. Say it gave me
a chrome handle to a different and difficult world.
Not Disappearing
The poems I write
to you
seem bird-bone light
in comparison
to my poems about cars
and the freeway
and the heavy-metal centuries
in which I’ve lived.
Something disappears
when I talk to you,
and it also happens
that each word’s history
leads to a question—
what nouns and verbs
could we share
straight up?
I think the most beautiful words
are drifting, smoky things
with such long histories
you would have known them
as I would know them:
dawn,
the moon,
waves and boats,
laurel trees.
I think we both know the meaning
of a line of women walking
back from the beach,
some singing, some
carrying baskets—
and one who runs ahead,
runs not in a direct line,
but dips like a swallow—
and a cloudless pale blue sky.
Praise for The Islands Project:
"Some of these poems are electrifying, others provocative and still others heartwrenching, at least four good reasons to own this book."
--Maxine Kumin
About the author:
Eloise Klein Healy is the author of six books of poetry and three spoken word recordings. She was the founding chair of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Antioch University Los Angeles where she is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing Emerita. Healy directed the Women’s Studies Program at California State University Northridge and taught in the Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. She is Resident Poet at the Idyllwild Summer Poetry Festival, the co-founder of ECO-ARTS, an eco-tourism/arts venture, and founding editor of ARKTOI BOOKS, an imprint of Red Hen Press. Her latest collection of poems is The Islands Project: Poems For Sappho.
Website: www.eloisekleinhealy.com (includes podcasts)
Eco-Arts: www.eco-arts.net
Arktoi Books: www.eloisekleinhealy.com/arktoi.html
E-Mail: eloisekleinhealy@mac.com
Webpage: www.eloisekleinhealy.com/podcast.html
Blog Talk Radio tinyurl.com/3lcu2x
ISBN: 10-1-59709-085-9
13-978-1-59709-085-8
Red Hen Press (2007)
115 pages, $17.95
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Skylight Books: tinyurl.com/4xg9fo
Amazon: tinyurl.com/4tzh4s
University of Chicago Distribution: tinyurl.com/4r497h
Red Hen Press: www.redhen.org