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Ghost Light: Poems
Eight poems. WINNER OF THE STARTING GATE CHAPBOOK AWARD.
26 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2012
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July 7, 2018
7/7/18 Update:
I’m really trying not to buy more books, but I’m so glad I bought this little chapbook. I’m rereading it while I wait for three “In Transit” library reserves moving at glacial speed.
Each of the poems in this book can be read and contemplated for days, and I just hit section 9 of a 29-part poem called “Ghost Light (An Actor Prepares),” I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read it, and I want to share it with you.
But first a prelude:
When I was in healing school (a long story), we did a brain-balancing exercise where you shot energy into somebody’s head, alternating hemispheres. It was supposed to get both hemispheres working equally, and when it did, there was a moment where your head felt like it had been electrocuted as it kind of fizzed back and forth and then exploded. I don’t know how else to describe it, but believe me when I say this was pleasurable. At the end, your head felt massive and fluid. Well this poem, contemplated, had virtually the same effect:
I’ll just float away now.
Original Review
Sad, moving, sometimes wry poems. This is a slip of a book—pages stapled together with a cover, winner of the Finishing Line Press’s Starting Gate Chapbook Award—and you can read it in a few minutes. But then you’ve got to read it again and again, and fortunately I bought it ($12 for quality, not quantity) from Finishing Line Press so I can dip in whenever I want.
Also, I finally have a quick work to reference in answer to the question, “What do you mean when you say you want to read only writers who write in their inimitable authentic voices?”
Also, for nontheater folk: a ghost light is the light that is left on, energizing a dark theater from the middle of the stage when nobody is there.
I’m really trying not to buy more books, but I’m so glad I bought this little chapbook. I’m rereading it while I wait for three “In Transit” library reserves moving at glacial speed.
Each of the poems in this book can be read and contemplated for days, and I just hit section 9 of a 29-part poem called “Ghost Light (An Actor Prepares),” I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read it, and I want to share it with you.
But first a prelude:
When I was in healing school (a long story), we did a brain-balancing exercise where you shot energy into somebody’s head, alternating hemispheres. It was supposed to get both hemispheres working equally, and when it did, there was a moment where your head felt like it had been electrocuted as it kind of fizzed back and forth and then exploded. I don’t know how else to describe it, but believe me when I say this was pleasurable. At the end, your head felt massive and fluid. Well this poem, contemplated, had virtually the same effect:
9
Right is left. Left is right.
This is the Tao of the stage.
It was right that you left me.
Love is the act, the rightest way
To connect doom to doom.
I’ll just float away now.
Original Review
Sad, moving, sometimes wry poems. This is a slip of a book—pages stapled together with a cover, winner of the Finishing Line Press’s Starting Gate Chapbook Award—and you can read it in a few minutes. But then you’ve got to read it again and again, and fortunately I bought it ($12 for quality, not quantity) from Finishing Line Press so I can dip in whenever I want.
Also, I finally have a quick work to reference in answer to the question, “What do you mean when you say you want to read only writers who write in their inimitable authentic voices?”
Also, for nontheater folk: a ghost light is the light that is left on, energizing a dark theater from the middle of the stage when nobody is there.
Displaying 1 of 1 review