Java

Do yourself a favor, and become acquainted with the excellent blog, Coffee Spew, (http://coffeespew.wordpress.com/). While you're there, of course, I really hope you'll take a look at the review (http://coffeespew.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/psalms/) coffee-baron Robert Wake has written of my book, Psalms, which is still very available from Little Eagle Press. Reviewers of poetry books rarely receive the thanks they deserve for contributing, as they do, to a discussion of the state of poetry; which I believe is, in a word, thriving. So thank you, Bob, not only for words of praise, but for bothering with words at all.

Incidentally, the webpage for Psalms is http://lileaglepsalms.blogspot.com/ , and you'll find ordering information there.

Book Review

There's a new book on the shelf that I reserve for the fine work of my friends over at Cross + Roads Press. Not that I expect Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball to spend much time on the shelf. Far too much good material to set it aside for long.

Poet Sharon Auberle, on the surface, tells the story of her mother's last days on this earth; that of a woman who danced her way through an uneasy life. Anyone who's ever lost a parent, or ever will, can benefit from the reading. Just beneath the surface, the writer finds other tales about to finally break into daylight: the story of a father who left early, in a time when that was the exception; the subsequent effects on the lives and loves of the author and her mother; the perhaps too quickly passed judgements all around; all told in the voice of an accomplished artist of the written word, and through it all, there is the dance. In "Spring Came Late That Year", we read:

Maggie danced
the night Edward left
whirling
her baby girl
about the kitchen
their mingled tears
spinning out
bouncing off windows
like the freezing rain
falling that night

and later, in Legacy:

What my mother left me
was not dancing shoes
or diamond rings
or bad luck with men

it was the way she stood
so straight
barely reaching my shoulder
but tall
on days when life
bends most people low

and that quickstep of hers
forward always
to music only she could imagine

Sharon Auberle is storyteller enough to find and relate what is unique in her life. She is poet enough to show us what is universal. She has deftly tackled subject matter that in lesser hands could have been maudlin, even trite -- but has triumphed in a way that elevates us. Her luck in collaborating with editor/publisher Norbert Blei assured an elegant book to stand beside the thirty others from his press. Blei's decision to reproduce pages from the author's journal, written in the days immediately preceding her mother's demise, was a brilliant one, giving us a very palpable connection to the writer in a time of vulnerability juxtaposed with great strength.

The book is Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball, by Sharon Auberle, ISBN 978-1-889460-21-5, $12 from Cross + Roads Press, P.O. Box 33, Ellison Bay, WI, USA, 54210 and don't forget to slide them a couple of bucks for the postman & the packaging.

- Ralph Murre

A Celebration of Flight

Crow Ink by Sharon Auberle, 2007

You may be forgiven if you haven’t read Sharon Auberle’s first three books of poetry, (A Green Absolution, Sanctuary, and A Necklace of Birds) because you may not have known what a writer she is, may not even have known of the books’ existence. If, however, you fail to get your hands on a copy of Crow Ink, don’t say you weren’t informed.

Auberle is a poet who divides her time between a green peninsula of Wisconsin and the arid mountains of Arizona, between the teen-ager in her heart and the somewhat more mature body she inhabits, and between having her feet on the ground and taking to her wings, which only the most blind among us cannot see. In all this, she shows us the connectedness we share with the natural world (and, possibly, the supernatural), she floats comfortably in this foggy patch between past and future, and records her heart’s journey in an unashamedly romantic way.

In “Heron In Winter”, we can sense a little of Lucinda Williams’ sentiment as Auberle tells of a great bird stepping out onto thin ice, “. . .

. . .a connection in the season
when bird and woman
must leave safe ground, . . .

. . . it’s what we have to do
sometimes, to survive.
The sky is a mirror

beneath our long legs
but oh, beautiful sister,
where will you sleep tonight?

I mentioned, earlier, that she shows us our connection to nature and time, but it goes far beyond that for Sharon, who appears to be at the very center of it. For instance, in “Today On The Rocks” . . .

. . . listen:

one day you’ll be part of all this
and what binds you now
who makes you weep
will not even be a memory.
What will remain is this:

a flash of déjà vu, perhaps,
between strangers
a vague yearning in them for water
their joy in a river of stars
a rock pattern, the light on a wing
they stop to watch, translucent
as it catches the morning sun.

If you have grown weary of poetry that takes concerted deciphering only to learn that it means nothing at all, I must heartily recommend that you make the switch; go over to Crow Ink. To get your copy, contact Sharon Auberle at sea_poet@msn.com . (that’s sea underdash poet.)

“But, wait a minute,” I hear you saying, “isn’t that YOUR art work on the cover of the book?” Why, yes it is, thank you. “And isn’t Sharon Auberle a friend of yours?” Why, yes she is. “Well then why . . .” I see – why should you believe what I say about the merits of this book? – because it happens to be true.

- Ralph Murre