poems - Softcover

Spurling, Norine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0615931790 ISBN 13: 9780615931791

Publisher: Buffalo Arts Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Norine Spurling’s poems reflect a lifetime of attention to experience, to feeling, to thought, which she shapes into words. Her luscious images are color drenched: “milk stained sky”, “carmine wash”, “bird calls/ a turquoise song”, “fading sunset’s garnet cast”. She uses myth, travel, people to probe for their meanings. Her poems of loss break the heart, though she is unafraid to collect those who passed in the honest assessment of all they meant to her. She surprises the reader with poems that startle and make new. We can understand the “vinegar bones of yesterday” though no one has quite said it like that before. In these poems she carefully elucidates the stages of a woman’s life and carefully reflects on all she has known. This beautiful book will call us again and again to enjoy not only the visual imagery but also the sounds of place, time, and memory.

- Linda Drajem, Professor of English, SUNY College at Buffalo

About this title

About the Author:

Norine Spurling was born in the semi-tropical islands of Bermuda. As a child she attended painting classes with a local watercolor artist who encouraged her to look at art as a career choice. Her parents sent her to Philadelphia where she studied at Moore College of Art, and later at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Two prominent women artists, whose work has been an influence and who studied at these institutions, are Mary Cassatt and Alice Neal. After having lived in California for several years and raising a family, she moved to Western New York, where she completed her formal education at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB), and went on to teach drawing there for several years. While teaching a class in the Black Mountain program at UB she met Jimmie Gilliam, who was teaching a writing class there. At this time she began to reflect on her youthful interest in creative writing and was inspired to enroll in a writing workshop with Jimmie. She then took workshops with other Buffalo poets, like Anne Goldsmith and Jorge Guitart. Norine is one of the founding members of Women of the Crooked Circle writing group.

About this edition

• Publisher: Buffalo Arts Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0615931790
• ISBN 13: 9780615931791
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 178