Ascension

Poetry. In this diary of intentionality, the behearer and the beholder approach the world with an attitude of longing—for less: less sorrow, less suffering. Daily practice delivers the speaker to profound meditations on the nature of the self. These poems press against our deepest held questions: what is an I? Where are my borders? What or how am I "with"? "From whom—from what—do we hide?" "This little book of few words is immense in its silences, depths of ambiguity, range of feeling—dark, light, umber, copper, sienna—full of strange inward jottings (graphically adventurous) that echo and dance in a reader's mind. ASCENSION's quiet absences are fully, passionately, present—you can almost hear the music the title suggests, and the loss and wonder that goes with it"—Norman Fischer.

giovanni singleton received an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from The New College of California. She is a recipient of a New Langton Bay Area Award Show for Literature and has been a fellow at Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Cave Canem: A Workshop for African-American Poets, and the Hurston/Wright Writers Week. In 1999, she founded NOCTURNES (RE)VIEW OF THE LITERARY ARTS, a critically acclaimed journal dedicated to the work of artists and writers of the African Diaspora and other contested spaces. She has given presentations on writing, editing, graphic design, and publishing at high schools, colleges, and conferences such as the American Literature Association (2004), Series X: Bay Area Women Publishers (2002), and the New York Festival of Literary Magazines (2002). For five years, she served as a member of the Board of Directors for Small Press Traffic, a literary arts center in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including CHAIN, FENCE, FIVE FINGERS REVIEW, Callaloo, The Breast: An Anthology (Global City Press, 1994), Beyond the Frontier: African American Poets for the Millenium (Black Classics Press, 2002), and on the building of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2002, she was a featured guest on NPR's Forum hosted by Michael Krasny. She has taught poetry in the San Francisco Unified School District and at Saint Mary's College in Moraga, CA.