Sharp as Want

Never So Proud

I’ve never been so proud of Little Eagle Press as I am today in announcing the publication of Sharp as Want, a bright book which combines poetry by Jeanie Tomasko and photo artworks by Sharon Auberle.

When I began the press a few years ago, my goal was to publish books that married verbal and visual art, to treat both forms with equal respect, and certainly not to to have the art in a book to simply illustrate, but rather, to take the reader/viewer to a place of delicate balance that can only happen, I believe, in that space between two complimentary works. This goal has never been better achieved than it is in Sharp as Want, the work of two brilliant women at the top of their game. Take for example:

All Souls’ Day

what I mean is how
do you say bird in a northern tongue
how do you say keep (from) sleeping

how do you say want
as in all poems carry want

how do you say wings of the snow petrel
can show you how
to weep

how do you say
wings want weep

how do you carry want

to carry your memory
is not heavy, is nothing
like heaviness

heavy is the heron
after it swallowed the fish
as big as its back and it could not lift
but only move its weight inches above the water
to the shore across the marsh

not because I believe
you carried anything

what I mean is how
do you say that shore across
if you don’t know the way

~ Jeanie Tomasko

~ Sharon Auberle

Here is a book of love and loss, death and desire, and love regained. Here is the second book to receive Little Eagle’s R.M. Arvinson Award. Here is a book you should own. You can, you know, by sending a check for $18. ($15 + $3 for S&H) to Little Eagle Press, P.O. Box 684, Baileys Harbor, WI 54202, or, by chasing down either of the book’s contributors.

NOTE: Bruce Hodder has posted a review of Sharp as Want on his fine e-zine. "the beatnik". See it here: http://whollycommunion.blogspot.com/2011/05/review-sharp-as-want.html. Thanks, Bruce!

Sincerely,
~ Ralph Murre