Between Twilight

by Connie Post

Connie Post's Newest Book. In Between Twilight Post delves deep into the difficult journeys of everyday life and intersects those with the difficult maps of the past. There are "atrocities in the body" and many ways a person can falter, fall or rise from "the hue of an unseen self." Post explores the necessary truths, the ones we can no longer hide, the ones we've held on to, for too long. In these poems, the reader will more fully understand Faulkner's "the past is never the past in never past, it's not even dead." The poet infuses elements of evolution, illness, astronomy, humanity, internal travels inside our bodies, and travels back in time "before shadows understood their first for light." Post's poems will seep into our subconscious and help us see how a room can be "dark and iridescent all at once." "In poems built like litanies, composed of echoes and refrains, and lit with the muted palette of dusk, Connie Post's Between Twilight illuminates the experience of inhabiting "the body / that knows the sound of a belt / removed before a beating...that knows / how to leave... / like music leaving a cathedral." This honest voice, this exiled voice, comes through in poems that strike me as prayer. They seek mercy, not so much from a deity but from the world, and most significantly, from herself."--Diane Seuss, author of sonnets winner of the Pulitzer Prize "In spare free verse poems of unusual power, Connie Post locates the nexus between ourselves and a suffering a place of intimacy and estrangement where a lone crow flies over ruined houses 'while the grass burns / through the singed fields / of our sins.' Amid climate change and pandemic warnings, pain, pleasure, appetite, and illness fuse and broaden the poet's 'you will imagine another table / another history / a way to fold and blend / your small, unrecognizable life / into a recipe you can/understand.' Post's eco-poems are refreshingly personal, testaments to the necessity of speaking truth in a time of crisis. Deeply humane and beautifully crafted, Between Twilight is the book of 'a century / that never saw itself burning,' but also the book of a poet 'making [her] own constellations // ...as celestial bodies do // quietly changing the galaxy/as if to say 'I'm here.'"--Ned Balbo, author of The Cylburn Touch-Me-Nots "Connie Post's Between Twilight presents us with all the diminishments of poems about abuse, death, plane crashes, global warming, rich tea of examination, and she invites us to 'Learn to love the skeletons...the ones whose teeth are missing...the ones found in tombs.' Here, in Pos's capable hands, is a bright dance of demons and persistence and emotional poise."--Doug Ramspeck, author of Book of Years Poetry.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

Published February 6, 2023

About the author

Connie Post is a San Francisco Bay area poet. She served as the first Poet Laureate of Livermore, California from 2005 - June 2009.

She has taught poetry workshops at Book Passage, Sebastopol Center for the Arts and many other venues. She has served as the keynote speaker at several Bay Area Literary events.

Reviews

[Deirdre Fagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An arresting and powerful collection that will hold you close and not let go. Highly recommended.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Post's newest collection is a superb mix of narrative and confessional poetry, ranging in theme from joyous aspects of everyday moments to disturbing reflections on childhood trauma. These tonal shifts don't distract from the beauty of the work, but add to it, allowing the reader to calm down a bit in a sort of meditative pause before delving deeper into the narrator's backstory. The best thing about these poems is that they are highly accessible, and reader is allowed to enter and exit them at will. All in all, a wonderful book.

[David Cazden · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a style that is accessible, consistent, spare yet addictive to read, Post takes on a
wide range of subjects--especially trauma, elegy, but with beauty, darkness, grief and joy--a wide range, a sprectrum of lived experience presented in a nice long collection of poems. These poems all proceed with a certain ease and verbal inventiveness that makes each one wonderful to read. Reccomended for scope, style, at times difficult subject matter, and confidence in craft.

[Melissa]

My review can be found here: https://merliterary.com/2023/09/12/be...