Haste: Poems

by Lisa Orme Bickmore

How does one reconcile competing emotions, such as the intense love and concurrent claustrophobia that one can feel toward one's family, or the longing and simultaneous indifference engendered by thinking about the afterlife, or the sweet and haunting memories of childhood? In probing such elusive spaces, Lisa Orme Bickmore finds that she is gazing on figures that align and collapse and then realign. She experiences flashes of insight that bridge the past to the future, that link mortality to immortality. Meditative, at the same time sensual, Bickmore's verses are like dreams. She is as much apart from life as she is attuned to it, which is among the burdens that the best poets seem to possess and share.

60 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lisa Bickmore is my hero. I took several English and writing classes from her at the Community College. Her poetry is eclectic, so as you are reading the collection, each new one is different enough from the last that you want to finish the book to glean from her variety of styles. Her poetry is real and tangible, and she gives you just enough context in the lines about her life that you can get the whole image, reading between the lines, and at the same time, it relates to your own experience, which is a sign of a successful poet, in my humble opinion.