Her Voice Is Blackberries - Softcover

Joan Marie Wood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0941895289 ISBN 13: 9780941895286

Publisher: Amherst Writers & Artists Press, Inc., 2004

Synopsis

See reviews below.

About this title

About the Author:

Joan Marie Wood has published in literary magazines and anthologies: Peregrine, Essential Love, etc. She is the founder and director of Temescal Writers of Oakland, California, through which she has offered writing workshops since 1995.

Review:

Poet Joan Marie Wood presents Her Voice Is Blackberries, a unique anthology that alternates between poetry and brief, stream-of-consciousness style prose vignetts. Grounded in memories, Her Voice is Blackberries reflects upon coping with a beloved yet flawed mother who killed herself by hanging. The need to make sense of a seemingly senseless loss, and the struggle to find beauty in the wake of terrible tragedy, give Her Voice Is Blackberries an unforgettable, keenly honed appreciation for the wonders in life despite the grief-stricken pain inside. Highly recommended. Whatever Path I Take: When I try to get / back to her these days / Ware Catell's elms / creak in the wind, cicadas / buzz, ripe tomates are piled on a wire / spool under the maple tree.// Whatever path I take becomes / a dream (her scent of wild / roses fading) / that leads me around / a corner back to / this day's light. --James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

Joan Marie Wood's Her Voice Is Blackberries is at once a collection of poems, a journey into memory and grief, and a ritual of integration. . .From that devastating loss [the mother's suicide] the poet uncovers, investigates and reconstructs the painful shards of memory into graceful poetry. . .The writing is spare, poignant, clear and precise. . .This is an extraordinarily courageous and powerful collection of writing which has transformed a devastating and inevitably scarring childhood experience into poignant and beautiful poetry. --Des Barry

Her Voice Is Blackberries takes the reader on a journey that is at once immense and personal. These poems, grounded in remembrance, filled with the minutiae of daily life, open onto a new understanding of the sacred, and reveal to the reader the oneness of the Self and the World. --Diane di Prima, author of Loba and Recollections of my Life as a Woman

About this edition

• Publisher: Amherst Writers & Artists Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0941895289
• ISBN 13: 9780941895286
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80