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The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles
This book is a poetry collection about the experiences of living and working in the polar environment. The author was an aviator for many years in the polar regions flying for the US Air Force and resupplying the US scientific research stations on a routine basis. The flying was anything but routine, and he brings those surreal landscapes and flying phenomenon to the reader through his keen sensitivity to the human condition, ever having to adapt to what the polar regions present to the polar operator.
Serving the US scientific interests abroad at the poles is the sole facet of why the US Air Force, Air National Guard, US Coast Guard, and US Navy combine to churn out the successful mission year in and year out. It is fraught with danger, beauty, the unusual, and the ever-present foe of the elements. Extreme cold and wilderness combine to confront the aviator and seamen with sometimes uncompromising force. The poles are a region where nature is dominant, but it also gives scientists the earliest clues of global warming and environmental decay. The poet captures all this and more in his portrayal of the places where most of humanity will never see, nor be able to appreciate the pristine beauty (and cooling mechanism of the planet) resident at the icecaps that we are losing as a result of global warming.
Serving the US scientific interests abroad at the poles is the sole facet of why the US Air Force, Air National Guard, US Coast Guard, and US Navy combine to churn out the successful mission year in and year out. It is fraught with danger, beauty, the unusual, and the ever-present foe of the elements. Extreme cold and wilderness combine to confront the aviator and seamen with sometimes uncompromising force. The poles are a region where nature is dominant, but it also gives scientists the earliest clues of global warming and environmental decay. The poet captures all this and more in his portrayal of the places where most of humanity will never see, nor be able to appreciate the pristine beauty (and cooling mechanism of the planet) resident at the icecaps that we are losing as a result of global warming.
58 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2015
596 people want to read
About the author
Ronnie Smith
23 books10 followersRonnie Smith grew up in Chicago, Illinois and Baltimore, Maryland. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Loyola University Maryland, and later studied engineering at the University of Maryland. Colonel Smith, retired from the Air Force after 30 years of service, where he commanded or flew over 1,000 flights in Antarctica as well as serving in Air Force/U.N. missions on all the other continents. Challenged by extreme winds and temperatures that could drop to minus 75 degrees Fahrenheit during Antarctic summer, physical and mental endurance were paramount to combat the rigors of prolonged operational stress. He discovered in that world contemplation and divine majesty. His poetry and paintings rest upon the foundation of the underlying wonder of God in humanity and creation. He hopes to develop a spiritual retreat center to allow participants to reconnect to their own God-centered inner world, experienced in a sanctuary of the divine natural world.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 12, 2015
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles is a collection of poetry written by Ronnie J. Smith. Smith is a professional aviator whose flights took him over both poles, and he was also the in-theater Commander of Operation Deep Freeze which enabled him to spend 2005-2008 in Antarctica. His poetry shows the deep inspiration he gathered from his flights over, and time spent, on the ground in the polar regions. Many of his works are free verse and rely upon the pairings of sound and sense to impart their own internal rhythms. In Iluliaq, the sound and sense pairings work with the repeated refrains to heighten the tension and reflect the subject of the waves lapping on the ice.
Smith’s work is rich in imagery that builds the mood at the same time that it creates endless vistas in the reader’s mind’s eye. He frequently uses alliteration and the repetition of vowel sounds to marry the form of his words to the sense of his subject. In The Only Road, the lines: “Star-eyed falcons stun/ Those frozen seas” illustrate his use of alliteration in a palindromic form that’s evocative, pleasing to the ear and dramatic. At times, Smith’s use of refrains creates a chant-like rhythm; a music that seems to stamp and roll and immerse itself into the reader’s consciousness.
I must confess that I have long been enraptured by the polar regions, and have spent untold hours enchanted by the tales of those explorers Smith memorializes in his poetry, and awed by the photographic images of those icy wastes and the harsh grandeur. And while I’ve never been more than an armchair adventurer in those polar climes, I felt, reading The Last White Ruby, as though I were in the presence of a kindred spirit, albeit one whose adventures are indeed first-hand.
Smith’s words capture the magic, mystery and majesty of his subject, and I frequently found myself reading the same lines aloud over and over, letting my tongue and mind taste the meeting of form and sense. His images are crystalline and flowing all at once, and his style is reminiscent of that of the Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Edgar Allan Poe. I was drawn to Smith’s tributes to Amundsen, Shackleton and Hillary, and bemoaned anew the plight of Scott’s ponies in Sonnet to the South Pole Ponies.
The Last White Ruby is the real deal. It’s a collection of marvelous poetry that spoke so directly to me that I’m still seeing vast white canyons, summer dusks flowing into dawn and the ineffable sadness of what has been irretrievably lost. The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles is most highly recommended.
The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles is a collection of poetry written by Ronnie J. Smith. Smith is a professional aviator whose flights took him over both poles, and he was also the in-theater Commander of Operation Deep Freeze which enabled him to spend 2005-2008 in Antarctica. His poetry shows the deep inspiration he gathered from his flights over, and time spent, on the ground in the polar regions. Many of his works are free verse and rely upon the pairings of sound and sense to impart their own internal rhythms. In Iluliaq, the sound and sense pairings work with the repeated refrains to heighten the tension and reflect the subject of the waves lapping on the ice.
Smith’s work is rich in imagery that builds the mood at the same time that it creates endless vistas in the reader’s mind’s eye. He frequently uses alliteration and the repetition of vowel sounds to marry the form of his words to the sense of his subject. In The Only Road, the lines: “Star-eyed falcons stun/ Those frozen seas” illustrate his use of alliteration in a palindromic form that’s evocative, pleasing to the ear and dramatic. At times, Smith’s use of refrains creates a chant-like rhythm; a music that seems to stamp and roll and immerse itself into the reader’s consciousness.
I must confess that I have long been enraptured by the polar regions, and have spent untold hours enchanted by the tales of those explorers Smith memorializes in his poetry, and awed by the photographic images of those icy wastes and the harsh grandeur. And while I’ve never been more than an armchair adventurer in those polar climes, I felt, reading The Last White Ruby, as though I were in the presence of a kindred spirit, albeit one whose adventures are indeed first-hand.
Smith’s words capture the magic, mystery and majesty of his subject, and I frequently found myself reading the same lines aloud over and over, letting my tongue and mind taste the meeting of form and sense. His images are crystalline and flowing all at once, and his style is reminiscent of that of the Victorian poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Edgar Allan Poe. I was drawn to Smith’s tributes to Amundsen, Shackleton and Hillary, and bemoaned anew the plight of Scott’s ponies in Sonnet to the South Pole Ponies.
The Last White Ruby is the real deal. It’s a collection of marvelous poetry that spoke so directly to me that I’m still seeing vast white canyons, summer dusks flowing into dawn and the ineffable sadness of what has been irretrievably lost. The Last White Ruby: The Vanishing Polar Circles is most highly recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review