Carol Leavitt Altieri

Parables of Passages

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In her sixth book, Parables of Passages, Carol Altieri continues her moving and vivid exploration of love, loss, and the solace of the natural world. Beginning with a richly detailed series of poems about her New Hampshire childhood, she writes of the spill of scents, sounds, and colors that left her with memories "sharp as a blade / on my father's whetstone," where her father's astronomy lessons taught her to follow the stars whenever she got "lost in the woods," and where at ten she got "on speaking terms" with a family of sparrows, the source of her lifelong "love for all meanings / and seasons of nature under heaven." Of this enduring love, she writes later, "how tiny my home / against the depth and breadth of / of this heavenly scale." Illuminating the deep sense of loss in her later poems, this intimate connection to the natural world serves both as solace and reminder of what has been taken by death: "alone now" on the beach, she watches a heron "ride the airwaves trailing its slender black legs" and remembers "the many times / we explored ocean bays and salt marshes"; in her garden, she "hears the serenading sounds of / night come alive" and is "blindfolded" by loss, must find some "way of holding on"; and, as she is "revisiting the embroidered ground" of that same garden "where he labored a few months ago," she finds herself "slipping on moss-covered rocks, falling over [her]self" / into the wild grapevines." But this is also a woman who goes dancing to heal her pain, who "pirouettes, wildly improvising, / pulsating upper body, moving to the beat." In the end, this strength, this delight in every aspect of life, this determination to go on, all serve as bedrock for this honest, powerful, and courageous look at the ways in which loss and beauty, despair and hope, are inextricably intertwined. After all, this is a world where, sitting in her garden, she observes: "Bejeweled dragonflies skim over the pond. / All living metaphors proclaim the divine." And this is "A splendid viewing place to await the next life."

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Goose River Press
• Seitenzahl: 124
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. März 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 7mm
• Gewicht: 167g
• ISBN-13: 9781597131681
• ISBN-10: 1597131687
• Artikelnr.: 44569399

Autorenporträt

Carol Leavitt Altieri was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up on a farm in East Andover, New Hampshire during the Great Depression (1936-1950) which lasted much longer there. The echoes of early life on the farm and the natural world enhance her poetry. She continues to explore all aspects of nature on the Shoreline of Connecticut.Other poems are interwoven with travels in the United States and other countries: Brazil, British Isles, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Soviet Union, Spain, Venezuela and Yugoslavia.Carol has completed graduate study and was awarded the Certificate of Advanced Study at Wesleyan University in 2001 after receiving a Masters Degree in English and a Sixth Year Degree in Educational Leadership, at Southern Connecticut State University. While there, she received Graduate Poet of the Year.Recipient of an English Speakers Union Scholarship, Carol has studied English literature and culture at the University of London and accepted in Yale/New Haven Teachers Institute for six years.A member of the Guilford Poets Guild, she is now retired. She has published seven previous books of poetry: The Isinglass River, In Beijing there are no Dawn Redwoods, The Jade Bower, Still Brooding on a Strong Branch, Chronicles of Humans With Nature, Parables of Passages, Hiking the Rugged Shore and now Breaking Through.She participates in nature conservation and takes workshops in poetry writing. She enjoys her grandchildren, hiking, bird watching and reading natural history, poetry and creative nonfiction. She recently won a Connecticut Green Circle Award for Environmental activism-as she worked ten years as an activist preserving the shoreline from over development. During the pandemic, she explores the Hammonasset Beach. She is moving to Lakewood Ranch for six months each winter.