These Flecks of Color

by Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda

"Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda’s poems strike the ear along with the intelligence, evoking the natural world, visual art, and questions of self, transcendence, and responsibility, in the lyric mode. Her poems embrace the great subjects of the the intense, intuitive, and revelatory relationships that one thinking person can effect through observation, memory, and experience. . . . This poet is also doubly gifted, doubly trained, and brings a painter’s eye to the task of words. . . . Kreiter-Foronda’s poems remind us that seeing has its own way of meaning, and knowledge can arise from immersed observation as clearly as from overt acts of thinking. Her poems develop an idea of individual responsibility in relation to what is natural. In moments of intense emotion time is stilled, yet expands; these poems open like flowers with illuminated moments of double vision, inviting and challenging us to look again, revise our cursory sight and think more deeply." -- Cathryn Hankla, “Redoubled Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda’s Lyrics,” Four Virginia Poets Laureate (2004-2012), Edited by Sofia M. Starnes, Poet Laureate of Virginia (2012-2014)

254 pages, Paperback

Published October 10, 2018

About the author

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda served as Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia from 2006 to 2008. She holds a B.A. from the University of Mary Washington and M.Ed., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from George Mason University, where she received the first doctorate, an Outstanding Academic Achievement and Service Award, and a Letter of Recognition for Quality Research from the Virginia Educational Research Association for her dissertation, Gathering Light: A Poet’s Approach to Poetry Analysis. In 2007 both universities gave her the Alumna of the Year Award.

She has co-edited three anthologies and published nine books of poetry, including These Flecks of Color: New and Selected Poems and The Embrace, winner of the Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award. She is the recipient of a Council for Basic Education Fellowship, five Virginia Commission for the Arts grants, the Ellen Anderson Award, a Virginia Cultural Laureate Award, a Phoebe first-place award, a Spree first-place award, an Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Award, a Passages North contest award, multiple awards in Pen Women competitions, six Pushcart Prize nominations, and a resolution of appreciation from the Virginia Board of Education for her service as poet laureate.

Her poems appear throughout the United States and abroad in journals and anthologies, such as Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Mid-American Review, Best of Literary Journals, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, Poet Lore, Hispanic Culture Review, and World Poetry Yearbook 2015. Two of her poems are featured in art installations at Metro stations as part of the Washington Metropolitan Area, Art in Transit. She currently conducts art-inspired poetry workshops for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Statewide Partners Program. Dr. Kreiter-Foronda also works as an abstract colorist painter and has exhibited her artworks widely in galleries, libraries, and educational settings.

Reviews

[Bill Glose · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this stunning collection, former Virginia Poet Laureate (2006-2008) Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda gathers work from past collections published over the past 31 years along with two dozen new poems. She plucks moments from the everyday images that the rest of manage to overlook and wraps them in silk verse. She strikes to the heart with descriptive poems of Virginia’s nature (“The eagles soar, their cries / vanishing as secrets / in my cupped palms”), the magic of quotidian moments (“Always, my luck has startled me. / This morning, for examples, the cat, / sensing sadness, jumps into my lap / and kneads his paws so I will / praise him.”), and art, artists and their works (“I stare long into white / until girls become clouds / racing out of troubled skies. / When I swirl my brush / through yellow, they / become incandescent sun.”). These Flecks of Color is a revelatory read, a chance, for a while, to view the world through the eyes of a master poet at the height of her craft.