In the pages that comprise An Overdose of Meditation, the poet readily confesses that "remembering, supposing, counting, assessing/ is no way to spend the time. It is an overdose/ of meditation." Yet the poet has devised a formula through which she realizes that thoughtful perception is a vital principle of life. The direct way, she says, to the inner fruit is through the interior power of the soul.
Whether the poet is conducting her orchestra or piloting the reader through space and time (either occupation her natural instrument), Mitchell's meditative poems reveal her poetic underpinnings. These poems are alive with metaphor, wry humor, and elemental confession as if to assure that when we read her work, sparks will fly up and take hold, kindling our own emotive fire.
SAMPLE POEM:
STANDARD DEVIATION
Resting after a fall never means
not getting up at all, but resting just until
worries begin their flight.
And for that relief, all that is needed
is a down pillow, and high windows to deliver
a share of moon's ambient light.
Or is this break a dumbness
and excuse,
another silly respite
just to put vexations right?
With no more to lose, it is time now to fracture
useless worry.
This resolve places me handily
on the brink of happiness,
just at the door of delight,
neatly positioned at the edge of comfort.
Irene Mitchell is the author of eight previous poetry collections, most recently "My Report from the Uwharries" (Dos Madres Press, 2022). Her Selected Poems, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2021. Dos Madres Press has published two other recent collections, "Clerestory" (2020), and "Fever" (2019). Mitchell taught Writing, English, and English to Speakers of Other Languages in inner city and rural New York. There she conducted poetry workshops and served as judge in poetry competitions. Formerly poetry editor of Hudson River Art Magazine, Mitchell is known for her collaborations with visual artists and composers. Her poems were set to music for piano and voice in an art-song cycle entitled Past All Doors, which debuted in Stuyvesant, New York. Several of her poems have been executed as broadsides and exhibited ad hoc at local galleries and libraries. Mitchell's early correspondence with poetry editors and scholars is included in the final year's collection of The Aylesford Mss., archived at Indiana University's Lilly Library. Mitchell was a recent Associate Artist in Residence with Cornelius Eady at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
