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Between States of Matter
A book of poems by poet Sherry Rind.
114 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 16, 2020
An enjoyable book of mostly-natural images that feels powerful in the early morning, when the world is slowly waking, and the animals and plants are coming alive again.
November 20, 2020
Shery Rind has the gift of clarity and calm in her artful language, a peace that lines the lines, whether filtering through history, loss, nature or memory, she touches on an emptiness that then winds its way to substance, swirling fusions that stun and grip and slip away through her crystaline vision.
December 25, 2020
Sherry Rind's new collection, Between States of Matter, is a more emotional and heartfelt work than the title might suggest. Combining humor and sorrow, often in the same poem, Rind observes nature through the lenses of both art and science, using banal as well as sublime experiences as metaphors for the human condition. Banal as in “The Newly Bereaved Fixes a Toilet”: I insert the valve, washers, nuts, and bolts / and am so astonished that the toilet flushes and fills / and does not leak that I press the handle again / and again, wasting water, spending pennies / without a thought / for what has passed / or is present or cannot be.
Sublime as in “Sea Turtle at Tortuguero, Costa Rica”: She rests between worlds as if, like us / she has almost grasped the order of things / but then the waves lift.
Between States of Matter is an erudite yet accessible guide to human nature through science and the natural world.
Sublime as in “Sea Turtle at Tortuguero, Costa Rica”: She rests between worlds as if, like us / she has almost grasped the order of things / but then the waves lift.
Between States of Matter is an erudite yet accessible guide to human nature through science and the natural world.
November 28, 2020
Sherry Rind's Between States of Matter awakens in me the desire to wake up, to pay attention to the extraordinary found in what is mostly taken for granted in the small world around me. Rind inspires me to stand in the yard and listen, to recognize the sounds and behaviors of particular birds and mammals. I've seen ducks and geese fly overhead all my life, but have never before stopped to contrast their one-directional "speeding like commuters" against the turkey vultures' easy gliding.
Rind captures with startling accuracy the intricacies of seasonal rhythms and the mutability "like the smell of lilacs, alive / only two weeks in a year ("Tuning") that moves in everything, over everything, even rocks.
The inaccessible science of change informs Rind's steady-eyed confrontation of loss. In "Blue Shirt" and "If I Could," to select just two of the poems which treat the death of a dearest loved one, we recognize ourselves, holding our personally chosen relics, traveling into the dreams where possibility of reconnection floats.
I cannot do justice in this short review to the humor Rind seeds into nearly every poem. In "Instead of Thinking About Peaches," to give one example, the persona leads us straight into taking an explosive bite, violent, sensual, and very, very funny.
Even in the matter-of-fact recounting of destroyed beauty, as in "Sarah Stone Paints the O'o Bird," Rind slips in something hopeful. Her description of Sarah Stone's visual tribute to a once fluttering delicacy of creation, since annihilated, whispers a suggestion of art's value.
I expect to return to these poems often. Their surprising, crystalline (to use an adjective meaningfully inserted into "A History of Glass") truth of observation and expanse of sparkling allusions will open my eyes to something new in each reading.
Rind captures with startling accuracy the intricacies of seasonal rhythms and the mutability "like the smell of lilacs, alive / only two weeks in a year ("Tuning") that moves in everything, over everything, even rocks.
The inaccessible science of change informs Rind's steady-eyed confrontation of loss. In "Blue Shirt" and "If I Could," to select just two of the poems which treat the death of a dearest loved one, we recognize ourselves, holding our personally chosen relics, traveling into the dreams where possibility of reconnection floats.
I cannot do justice in this short review to the humor Rind seeds into nearly every poem. In "Instead of Thinking About Peaches," to give one example, the persona leads us straight into taking an explosive bite, violent, sensual, and very, very funny.
Even in the matter-of-fact recounting of destroyed beauty, as in "Sarah Stone Paints the O'o Bird," Rind slips in something hopeful. Her description of Sarah Stone's visual tribute to a once fluttering delicacy of creation, since annihilated, whispers a suggestion of art's value.
I expect to return to these poems often. Their surprising, crystalline (to use an adjective meaningfully inserted into "A History of Glass") truth of observation and expanse of sparkling allusions will open my eyes to something new in each reading.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews