Four-Alarm House by Carolyn Gelland

Four-Alarm House is a wonderful collection of poetry written with a clear voice and concise language. Carolyn Gelland begins as a storyteller by a fire with a wild cat at her side, and transports us through time and place, from Viking conquests to an Ipiutak burial site in Alaska to ancient Peru, drawing from the subtle, the spiritual, as well as the splendor in both Nature and what man can create, including what man can destroy. She explores the studios of DeKooning, Munch, and Cezanne, takes joy in the ordinary, marvels at both the power and peace in Nature, leaving the reader on a wistful note with “ten /moons / on my eyelashes.”
   
Read and enjoy this exploration of the world around us through Gelland’s observations and journeys through both the natural and the metaphysical. I found myself reading this collection several times over, and discovering something new each time. This is a thoughtful and
delightful first collection. -
Jonathan K. Rice 
 
Main Street Rag 2012



 The Nazca lines are hundreds of designs and
figures etched into the desert in southern Peru,
apparently by the Nazca Indians, who flourished 
and declined  between 100 B.C. and A.D. 700.  
They are so immense that each of the patterns can  
only be seen from the air.
THE NAZCA LINES 

No crossroads in essences,
azimuths of ancient lines
come with Van Gogh’s earlobe in a dish,
quadrangles, triangles, trapezoids,
spirals and flowers;
birds fly in a heaven of sand
and whales outline the swim of things,
scars of such rectitude
that reptiles, monkeys and spiders
stigmatize
a scutched landscape.
These are not roads on which one perishes.
The endless line utters the endless line 
grieving the horizon
while concrete images arouse

the world of names,
commit the hovering
of knowledge,
and all these and the long way
have grown out of my wound.
The communication of what
is secret
by what is secret:
is that not all that is alive?

 


No comments:

Post a Comment