Night Ringing

by Laura Davies Foley

"I revel in the genius of simplicity" Laura Foley writes as she gives us in plain-spoken but deeply lyrical moments, poems that explore a life filled with twists and turns and with many transformations. Through it all is a search for a fulfilling personal and sexual identity, a way to be most fully alive in the world. From multicultural love affairs through marriage with a much older man, through raising a family, through grief, to lesbian love affairs, "Night Ringing" is the portrait of a woman willing to take risks to find her own best way. And she does this with grace and wisdom. As she says: "All my life I've been swimming, not drowning."
-Patricia Fargnoli, author of "Winter, Duties of the Spirit, " and "Then, Something"
I love the words and white space of poetry. I love stories even more. In this collection, Laura Foley evokes stories of crystallized moments, of quiet and overpowering emotion, of bathtubs and lemon chicken. The author grows up on the pages, comes of age, and reconciles past with present. Almost. Try to put the book down between poems to savor each experience. Try, but it won't be easy.
-Joni B. Cole, author of "Toxic Feedback, Helping Writers Survive and Thrive"
Plain-spoken and spare, Laura Foley's poems in "Night Ringing" trace a life story through a series of brief scenes: separate, intense moments of perception, in which the speaker's focus is arrested, when a moment opens to reveal a glimpse of the larger whole. Memories of a powerful, enigmatic father, a loving but elusive mother, a much older husband, thread Foley's stories of childhood, marriage and motherhood, finally yielding to the pressure of her attention, as she constructs a series of escapes from family expectations, and moves toward a new life. In these lucid, intense poems, Foley's quiet gaze, her concentration, and emotional accuracy of detail, render this collection real as rain.
-Cynthia Huntington, author of "Heavenly Bodies"
Foley's voice rings with quiet authority undercut by calamity, examining a life so extraordinary, she seems to have lived several people's lives, setting a high bar for poetic craft she meets, in great mystery perfectly expressed in the tiny, quotidian, "spent matches pressed on wet pavement," to soulful beauty, "as wind lifts/every shining wave"; in wisdom rooted in humor, from the deliciously funny "Flunking Jung," to self-deprecating wit, misreading "poetic" as "pathetic," reminding us wisdom is love, grown from self-compassion.
-April Ossmann, author of "Anxious Music"

Genres: Poetry

108 pages, Paperback

Published January 11, 2016

About the author

Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Joy Street won the Bi-Writer’s Award. Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, The Mom Egg Review and in the British Aesthetica Magazine. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foley’s strong fifth collection ruminates on romance and family via autobiographical free verse. Sensual language and alliteration make this poetic celebration of traumas and triumphs a meaningful read. One of the collection highlights is “In the Honda Service Area,” which unexpectedly unites modern technology with ancient literature. While a woman describes her impending hip replacement surgery to a friend, Foley tries to concentrate on Homer’s Iliad.

The collection is dedicated to Foley’s partner, Clara Giménez, and lesbian romance is a subtle undercurrent. Foley’s work is especially recommended for fans of Jane Hilberry and Adrienne Rich.

(See my full review at Foreword.)

[Alarie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a gift book, so I had little idea of what to expect. I enjoy a wide range of poetry, but I do have a particular love for accessible poetry and for brevity. Poem one: seven lines: bingo! Foley is a queen of compression, so many of these poems are half a page or less. Some are quick whispers, sketches of a moment, dream, or impression. I admire them, but her poems that sum up a dysfunctional family or emotional moments in so few choice words blow me away.

Several of my favorite gut-punch poems were about her father, a demanding, judgmental, egotistical doctor. How marvelously ironic that he initials were WTF! By poem three we learn that her mom is falling apart and a divorce is on the horizon. A few pages later we reach this prose poem, only 9-lines in its entirety, and my favorite from the book:

“WTF!

My father’s initials on our towels, and luggage, too….He’d ring his name in Morse code, banging the doorbell hard so I sprang from my games. If I failed, he’d enter my room and tell me…You’ve missed an opportunity to please. Oh, it was easy to fling open the door. The hard part was after, meeting his gaze.”

For me, the one failing of the book is the arrangement. Foley begins and ends in whispers. The poems I’ll remember a long time were not spaced evenly enough to keep up the momentum.

[Wall-to-wall books - wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love poetry and I love poetry book that tell a story. I loved this book! I loved the story in the poems. I meant only to read a few but I couldn't put it down and found myself reading the whole book!

This is a collection of very heartfelt - sometimes sad, sometimes joyous, always raw and truthful and gutsy! This take you on a journey through a woman's life, good times and bad. Through only these short poems I really felt like I got to know her. I felt for her. Is that possible with something so short? Well I guess it is if the author is good enough.

These poems are beautifully written each has so much depth but easy enough to understand. It really does read like an autobiography. I am sure this is one poem book that I will be reading again... maybe even tonight!

Not Drowning
On my back like a corpse, enjoying buoyancy,
I drift downstream as Amtrak, hooting, passes over.

I'm waving at passengers from the city,
who peer out their little windows, down at me.

I wave so they'll know I'm not dead,
but floating.

All my life I've been waving
to passengers passing,

all my life I've been swimming,
not drowning.

Thank you Worldwind Virtual Book Tours for sending me this book for my honest review.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...

Night Ringing is a new autobiographical collection of poems from author Laura Davies Foley. I read her Joy Street collection several years ago and am delighted to be able to explore more of her work.

Night Ringing includes 63ish (my count may be slightly off) short poems that begin in childhood, but quickly progress to more adult themes of finding love, losing love, divorce, and new beginnings. The collection is divided into five sections, which are reflective of different life stages. The poems within each are contemplative, and range from joyful to poignant. For example, the titular Night Ringing comes from a piece about being woken up by phone calls when a loved one has died.

My favorite poem in the collection is “In the Honda Service Area,” which relates an adult’s conversation about hip replacements through the eyes of a teenage girl reading The Iliad in the waiting room of a car dealership. I remember carrying around my battered copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey the summer before I took Advanced English in high school, desperately trying to finish the reading assignment before the school year started, and as I read Foley’s poem, I found my own memories reflected in the poem.

Because poetry is a form of art that often must be experienced to truly get a feel for an author’s writing style, here’s another of my favorite poems from the collection:

Incident in the Coffee Shop

I’m having my usual,

OJ, bialy, eggs poached easy.

I’ve known this waitress years:

Florence has met my kids,

my sons’ girlfriends,

my lover who I’m

breaking up with.

Today, when she asks

if everything’s okay,

I begin to cry

before realizing

she means the food.

The poems in Night Ringing are truly a reflection of life’s ups and downs, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Foley has a way with words, and can convey a range of emotion and experience in just a few breathtaking lines. If you enjoy contemporary poetry, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend her work.

And if your curiosity has been piqued, today is your lucky day! As part of the blog tour, I’m giving away a copy of the book (US/Canada only). The giveaway will end on 9/28, and you may enter using the Rafflecopter below.

[Lynda Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Night Ringing is an autobiographical collection of 63 poems, both in verse and free-form. The book is divided into five sections, each one dedicated to different parts of the author's life.

Part I catalogs her childhood memories: her parents' divorce, a friend's suicide, eavesdropping on strangers, her mother's drinking, her father's abusive manner, life after her parents' divorce, a skiing holiday with her father, horse riding, her mother running over a dog, and her first sexual encounter.

Part II focuses on early womanhood: abortion, her elopement and wedding to a Muslim, their meeting and courtship, a friend being convicted of murder, falling in love all over again, her relationship with her father, pregnancy, family vacations, and the death of her sister and father.

Part III deals with marriage and parenthood: her marriage to an older man, life on the farm, divorce, starting anew, and online dating.

Part IV covers aging: her mother's stroke, the death of her mother, discovering a new love with a woman, seeing a therapist, health problems, and another breakup.

Part V is mostly about carrying on: her ambiguous feelings about her breakup, raising a teenage daughter, her son's wedding, and sharing custody.

The poems celebrate the themes of family, love, marriage, and parenthood - all the while accompanied by the ever-present dog. They cover such diverse topics as suicide, murder, getting left behind at a rest stop, starting a fire, lapping up maple syrup, observing turtles, grinding coffee beans, homosexuality, erections, shopping, dreams, flunking exams, crying in front of a waitress, feet, floating, and drinking coffee. The titles are a very important part of each poem, e.g., "Leaving Him", in which the title says it all. The author manages to evoke taste, smell, and the changing weather with just a few choice words. My favorite line: "All my life I've been swimming, not drowning, despite any appearance to the contrary."

A beautiful concept beautifully rendered.

I received this book in return for an honest review.

Full blog post (30 September): https://booksdirectonline.blogspot.co...

[Mrs Mommy Booknerd http://mrsmommybooknerd.blogspot.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is somerthing very moving about poetry. I feel like it is a reflection of the soul. I feel that good poerty resonates with the reader and makes them feel things deep in their bones. In NIGHT RINGING, Foley captures a vast spectrum of emotions. She dazzles the reader with her verse that encompasses so much of life, the big and little moments. Such a wonderful way to escape by being taken away within beautiful poems.

[Betwixt the Pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I revel in the genius of simplicity" Laura Foley writes as she gives us in plain-spoken but deeply lyrical moments, poems that explore a life filled with twists and turns and with many transformations. Through it all is a search for a fulfilling personal and sexual identity, a way to be most fully alive in the world. From multicultural love affairs through marriage with a much older man, through raising a family, through grief, to lesbian love affairs, "Night Ringing" is the portrait of a woman willing to take risks to find her own best way. And she does this with grace and wisdom. As she says: "All my life I've been swimming, not drowning." -Patricia Fargnoli, author of "Winter, Duties of the Spirit, " and "Then, Something

"I love the words and white space of poetry. I love stories even more. In this collection, Laura Foley evokes stories of crystallized moments, of quiet and overpowering emotion, of bathtubs and lemon chicken. The author grows up on the pages, comes of age, and reconciles past with present. Almost. Try to put the book down between poems to savor each experience. Try, but it won't be easy. -Joni B. Cole, author of "Toxic Feedback, Helping Writers Survive and Thrive"

Plain-spoken and spare, Laura Foley's poems in "Night Ringing" trace a life story through a series of brief scenes: separate, intense moments of perception, in which the speaker's focus is arrested, when a moment opens to reveal a glimpse of the larger whole. Memories of a powerful, enigmatic father, a loving but elusive mother, a much older husband, thread Foley's stories of childhood, marriage and motherhood, finally yielding to the pressure of her attention, as she constructs a series of escapes from family expectations, and moves toward a new life. In these lucid, intense poems, Foley's quiet gaze, her concentration, and emotional accuracy of detail, render this collection real as rain. -Cynthia Huntington, author of "Heavenly Bodies"

Foley's voice rings with quiet authority undercut by calamity, examining a life so extraordinary, she seems to have lived several people's lives, setting a high bar for poetic craft she meets, in great mystery perfectly expressed in the tiny, quotidian, "spent matches pressed on wet pavement," to soulful beauty, "as wind lifts/every shining wave"; in wisdom rooted in humor, from the deliciously funny "Flunking Jung," to self-deprecating wit, misreading "poetic" as "pathetic," reminding us wisdom is love, grown from self-compassion. -April Ossmann, author of "Anxious Music"

Rating: 4/5 Penguins
Quick Reasons: gorgeous, powerful, poignant; the poetry in this collection is emotive, evocative, and thought-inspiring; while the progression isn't always clear, it's obvious there's a story to be found here, interlaced with both the abstract and the realistic; human nature--and personal growth--are very strong focuses throughout

HUGE thanks to Laura Davies Foley and the crew at Worldwind Book Tours for sending me a copy of this poetry collection in exchange for an honest review! This in no way altered my read of or opinions on this title.

I'm at the part
where Achilles, known for ripping limbs,
breaking hips apart, rests angry in his tent,
saying he will not fight

Let me just start by saying.... POETRY, HOW I MISS YOU!

I mean, honestly--this collection? makes me want to go out and scoop up as many poetry books as I can find, to devour, to be inspired by, to fall in love with. Laura Davies Foley has woven a journey--to self-acceptance, to loves and to heartbreaks, to the abstract and the realistic--that I both related to and was captivated by. This collection is FULL of human nature and the assurances that everything you do--even the worst mistakes you think you've ever made--make up exactly who you're supposed to be, and that's just beautiful to me, as a reader, to come across in poetry.

Because I think I'm in love,
I go out at night to see the snow,
how it falls and vanishes in the river

The poetry herein is emotive and evocative. Subjects range from the abstract to the wholly realistic--from sea turtles on page one, to experimentation with partners later on. Marriage, children, divorce; happiness, disappointment, anger--all are touched upon and explored, a tapestry of emotions.

Every sense is ALSO brought into play, though sometimes more subtly than you'd expect. Laura Davies Foley chose her words with care in order to take readers along a path of reminiscences, heartaches, and self-discovery. Split into different sections, each portrays a different event in the poet's life. Sometimes, this connection is easy to spot. Other times, readers will need to piece the seams together as the poems come.

Today, when she asks
if everything's okay,
I begin to cry,
before realizing
she means the food.

I really enjoyed basking in the beauty of Laura Davies Foley's words--and the journey transcribed within these pages. There's something heart-wrenching and honest about this collection that is bound to be relatable to even the newest readers of poetry. I definitely recommend this read to lovers of the poetic, the juxtaposition of abstract with realism, and seekers of an emotionally evocative journey. I am determined, after reading this exquisite collection, to read much more poetry in the near future!

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reviewed for Foreword Books IndieFab Awards.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura Foley’s new poetry collection, “Night Ringing” is a compilation of poems about the simplicity and complexity of life as seen through universal experiences. By examining everyday experiences, Foley tells us about her own life while giving us the opportunity to examine our own.

This collection is absolutely beautiful. I have to admit, I’m not much on poetry. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, but rather, I’ve never felt I had the patience to sit down and absorb its essence, and often times, I don’t feel like I’m smart enough to get it.

That said, I love how Laura Foley speaks to the reader. There are definitely big ideas, all kinds of figurative language, and deep thoughts in her work, but she expresses herself on a level that I can completely understand. The poems are about all stages of life lived as a woman, and a few favorites include,”Turtle,” “Online Dating,” and “Unanswered Questions.”

This is a lesbian review blog, so rest assured there are some poems about ladies loving throughout the book. Be sure to check out, “I Go Down to the River,” “City Romance,” and “Two Women” among others.

I love the flow of the work. Poetry books are organized in different ways, some are separated by themes, but this one seems to be separated by time. I love not only the flow of the words in the poems but the flow of the poems into one another.

I found myself anticipating what was going to come next. When something happens to the speaker, I want to know what comes next. Luckily, she often continues the story in subsequent poems, which satisfied my curiosity. I can appreciate that. There’s everything from dating to her mother’s stroke, to the first time she has sex with a woman. Marriage, kids, love, it’s all there. As someone who isn’t much on poetry, I can wholeheartedly recommend this work. You’re likely to find a bit of yourself in it, and maybe learn a few things as well, both about the speaker, yourself, and things around you.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

am not one for critically reviewing books, I generally just give you my opinion--what I like and what I don't, what moves me, inspires me, makes me smile or brings a tear--and that's what I'll do with this book of poetry. Night Ringing is a deeply personal and accessible collection of poems about the moments in life, both big and small. Even though the author has led a very different life than mine, I can relate to many of her feelings and many of these poems spoke to my soul. Incident in the Coffee Shop tells of a woman having her usual breakfast and an emotional moment when the waitress asks if everything is OK--only realizing in that moment that she meant the food. I can relate. Other poems capture moments at the doctor's office, the death of a parent, the end and the beginning of relationships, divorce, family secrets and issues, nature and different places. Emotions are expressed in clear tones and simple lines; the poems aren't complicated and there is nothing to get or not get. It's a moving collection and one to savor. I kept the book by my bed and read a poem or two each morning, skipping around to balance the happy or peaceful emotions with the sad ones. If you enjoy poetry and poems about life, you will likely enjoy it and if you are new to, or intimidated by the thought of poetry, Night Ringing is a gentle place to start appreciating it.

You can see my full review with pictures and one of the poems on my blog post here: http://kahakaikitchen.blogspot.com/20...

Note: A review copy of "Night Ringing" was provided to me by the publisher and TLC Book Tours in return for a fair and honest review. I was not compensated for this review and as always my thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Deborah Blanchard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love poetry. In a few words it can transport you to another place. You can almost always find a way to relate to a good poem. If they are good, they become a part of who you are. They encompass you. These poems are like pieces of a persons soul. Life put into small snippets. They will make you feel a variety of emotions, different for each person who reads them. You must savor them, read them aloud, feel them. You may smile, you may cry or ponder, but you will feel the words as they call out to you. I could relate to quite a few of the words in this wonderful book. If you like poetry or if you have never tried it, you should check this book out. Thank you Laura, for allowing us into your world.

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Night Ringing by Laura Foley examines a life led on its own terms in spite of the disappointments and the obstacles. A life that may look as though it was faltering and a person who seemed to be drowning, but a life that was lived with as little regret as possible. Foley expresses a wide variety of emotion in these compact poems, and readers will feel the crescendo when it hits.

Read the full review: http://savvyverseandwit.com/2016/09/n...

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very autobiographical poetry collection and has a lot of NYC poems in it.