O Song

Sharon Webster’s second collection of poems and art, O Song, sings the richness of everyday life: its outrageous surprises, abundant sensuality, unavoidable losses, and nuanced emotions. A “pickin’ party” in Kentucky, a saxophone’s wail, the loss of a beloved brother, complex love of birthplace – all this and more is explored in poems rich with lyric invention and suggestion. Evocative color images of Webster’s multi-media visual art add a soulful, non-verbal dimension to the depth, beauty and music of Webster’s yearnings and vivid perspectives.

“O, what a wonderful book! -- sometimes quirky and exuberant; sometimes tender, elegiac; sometimes dark, raw. But always Sharon Webster notices things: the family house exactly somewhere between a tobacco field and suburbia. And the crows! A tree cries/ through the night/ swollen with crows.”

—Sue D. Burton, author of poetry collections, Box and Little Stee

O Song is an outpouring of sound in visceral threads where colors cluster below the surface and shine. In this land where the soft white ghost of our cat/ comes back to watch at the window, Sharon Webster dissolves the boundaries between art and music, making room for the words in our laps like warm nets. She sees metaphors for cohesion in well-oiled rituals, cloth and the ten true moons of her fingertips. She brings us through the intimate grief of losing a bluegrass-infused brother, past ancestors in the mirror, to alight on branches heavy with crows. Webster’s lyricism is a treasured friend from whom You can part company and not be gone.”

—Cindy Ellen Hill, author of Love in a Time of Climate Change, Wild Earth, and Elegy for the Trees