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Repulsion Thrust
"Wonderful. The work covers a lot of ground while keeping a poetic sensibility, which is hard to do. We need more singularity-aware art." Ray Kurzweil "In poetry the thin line that divides the hermetic from the obvious is dangerous ground and not all poets can tread there without destruction. Magdalena is comfortable here and not only treads but dances." Bob Williams "Precise and exciting. Words sizzle on the page. Images steeped in the physical world work beautifully to illuminate complex emotions and states of mind. Magdalena Ball is an important poet." Joan Schweighardt, author of Gudrun's Tapestry, Virtual Silence and other novels. "This is a book of poetry for anyone who has been in love and knows what it is to live in the twenty-first century, but who is more than a little scared of what might happen if all the lights went out. Take these poems seriously. They may just have some of the answers you require." Catherine Edmunds, author wormwood, earth and honey "Magdalena Ball creates a stunning impression with her first full-length collection, Repulsion Thrust. Her poems speak of experience, wisdom, and curiosity and welcome the reader to embrace a voyeuristic ride. Beautiful, haunting, and honest, Repulsion Thrust is a powerful collection with a refreshing voice and an open heart." Lori A. May, author of stains "poems of clarity, epiphany and stark existential awareness. A bracing, imaginative collection of poetry that rewards repeated reading." Sue Bond, The Wordy Gecko "Using physics and philosophy, phobias and facets of astronomy and math, the poems in Magdalena Ball's new book, Repulsion Thrust, are manuals and kones to scientifically and whimsically imagined new worlds; they are forthright and experimental, they are futures you really hope are not true. Reading her book is like reading the poetic version of 1984 by George Orwell, where humans are really not human any more. And you might even feel like you are smarter, more hip to science." Nanette Rayman Rivera, writer and editor "A heart-felt exploration of the "black dog" that has the courage to leap between the crags and crevices of the daily round. Justin Lowe, Bluepepper
112 pages, Paperback
First published December 3, 2009
8 people want to read
About the author
Magdalena Ball
45 books149 followersMagdalena Ball runs Compulsive Reader http://www.compulsivereader.com. Her stories, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in many printed anthologies and journals, and have won several awards. She is the author of Bobish, The Density of Compact Bone, Unmaking Atoms, Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust, The Art of Assessment, Quark Soup, Sleep Before Evening and many other collaborations. Find out more at http://www.magdalenaball.com
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 11, 2010
Anything but, a review of Magdalena Ball’s “REPULSION THRUST” by J.R.McRae
http://jrmcrae-subversive.weebly.com
Magdalena has lived and breathed books most of her life and the erudition is evident in her first full length poetry collection, “Repulsion Thrust”. The imagery is drawn wide from quantum science to Maori folklore and a lot in between.
Insightfulness is evident in line on line as she exhumes layers of self and the ‘other’. Take the following excerpts as examples:
[from Omphalos]
meanwhile
flowers grow and die
people sicken, recover
it’s night and day and night again
not breaking that concentrated
unhappy contemplation
surely by now
you know something
about yourself
Whilst this exudes an earnest desperation, the following extract is all stark realization:
[from Brass Ring]
maybe anger is just another kind of fear
mortality
pressing us always
even while the wind
pulled back your hair
Poems like “Another Story” and “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” echo and further illumine the very humanness of our shared finite condition.
Magdalena’s imagery highlights our frailties and beatifies it. Poems like “Pie in the Sky”, about a homeless woman, “Monkey” which has allusions to the desperation of Brett Whiteley’s excruciating drug fuelled intravenous baboon series and the heart-wrenching but nonetheless gentle sorrow of “Grandpa’s Birds”.
Consider the following excerpts:
[from: Rock Talking]
the dust and debris of a life not wholly led
blows through wasted trees
[from Anagram]
A cryptic tear
broke the ice wall of his cheek
scribbling code in dirty cracks between pavement
It is not all pain and exposure. Poems like “Quantum Leap”, “Idea Virus”, “Assault by a Black Hole” and “Sweet Nothing” show the poet’s wryly humorous side.
Take the closing verses of the latter poem:
[from Sweet Nothing]
It was just there
end of uncertainty
beneath the gum stuck seat and dropped sweeties
finger's length away.
Life changing symmetry
perfectly safe
as we left
our detritus
mystery intact.
I round this brief review with one of the most sharply observed image clusters in this collection’s poetic universe:
[from Shadow Life]
You reach
somewhere between Michelangelo and ET
a shaky finger bridge
for something more
than just the ‘get by’
wile away the hours
how do you do.
http://jrmcrae-subversive.weebly.com
Magdalena has lived and breathed books most of her life and the erudition is evident in her first full length poetry collection, “Repulsion Thrust”. The imagery is drawn wide from quantum science to Maori folklore and a lot in between.
Insightfulness is evident in line on line as she exhumes layers of self and the ‘other’. Take the following excerpts as examples:
[from Omphalos]
meanwhile
flowers grow and die
people sicken, recover
it’s night and day and night again
not breaking that concentrated
unhappy contemplation
surely by now
you know something
about yourself
Whilst this exudes an earnest desperation, the following extract is all stark realization:
[from Brass Ring]
maybe anger is just another kind of fear
mortality
pressing us always
even while the wind
pulled back your hair
Poems like “Another Story” and “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” echo and further illumine the very humanness of our shared finite condition.
Magdalena’s imagery highlights our frailties and beatifies it. Poems like “Pie in the Sky”, about a homeless woman, “Monkey” which has allusions to the desperation of Brett Whiteley’s excruciating drug fuelled intravenous baboon series and the heart-wrenching but nonetheless gentle sorrow of “Grandpa’s Birds”.
Consider the following excerpts:
[from: Rock Talking]
the dust and debris of a life not wholly led
blows through wasted trees
[from Anagram]
A cryptic tear
broke the ice wall of his cheek
scribbling code in dirty cracks between pavement
It is not all pain and exposure. Poems like “Quantum Leap”, “Idea Virus”, “Assault by a Black Hole” and “Sweet Nothing” show the poet’s wryly humorous side.
Take the closing verses of the latter poem:
[from Sweet Nothing]
It was just there
end of uncertainty
beneath the gum stuck seat and dropped sweeties
finger's length away.
Life changing symmetry
perfectly safe
as we left
our detritus
mystery intact.
I round this brief review with one of the most sharply observed image clusters in this collection’s poetic universe:
[from Shadow Life]
You reach
somewhere between Michelangelo and ET
a shaky finger bridge
for something more
than just the ‘get by’
wile away the hours
how do you do.
April 23, 2011
This is a pretty amazing collection. While reading this I felt like a physicist, in love with the loneliness of passion and monotonous domesticity, on the set of a movie resembling both Bladerunner and some sort of Noir Romance. I recommend this for those who like to indulge in poetry that doesn't make them feel like they need a degree to understand it. Although it is quite complex when you take a deeper look, the poems' surface beauty is prominent and transports you into an entirely different world.
I've read that these poems are about love. I can't seem to grasp that notion. Yes, some do mention love, but not in the sense that you expect love to be spoken about, so I found myself wondering, "what the heck are they talking about?" These poems, to me, speak of a place in one's soul many are hesitant to expose in a world that is primarily preoccupied with conforming to social expectation. And you'll just have to read the collection to find out exactly what I mean by that. ;o)
I've read that these poems are about love. I can't seem to grasp that notion. Yes, some do mention love, but not in the sense that you expect love to be spoken about, so I found myself wondering, "what the heck are they talking about?" These poems, to me, speak of a place in one's soul many are hesitant to expose in a world that is primarily preoccupied with conforming to social expectation. And you'll just have to read the collection to find out exactly what I mean by that. ;o)
Read
September 4, 2011This book by Magdalena Ball is her first full length poetry collection of many varied subjects including, dogs, cats, math, tending gardens to evolving insects; she writes about healing. In the Equinox, she says…the world opens her uterus and births the morning. Wonderful imagery in this and Pie in the Sky. I enjoyed her Repulsion Thrust, the titled poem. From one poem to another she takes quantum leaps into a woman’s experiences with loving, living in an imperfect body, betrayal and eventual forgiveness.
In the titled poem, Repulsion Thrust, she writes: No silk is strong enough, For your anger, It isn’t yours really, It is mine, Genetic instructions, writ In your knit brows.
Perhaps, Maggie and I both live in the gardens between the house of Science and the house of God; picking flowers from both makes us happy. Only the use of metaphors in poetry can lead us off into many very different lands of thought and gardens of comprehension.
In another poem, Black Dog One, Magdalene is waiting for a bus (this in itself is a metaphor for contemplating the passage of time; all is quiet except for the lonely howls of an old black dog neglected by his master; maybe, like most of us, she is feeling neglected and unloved herself.
in her poem, Faster-than-Light, she describes times passing by the sound of vocal cords no longer vibrating; what a great metaphor for the loneliness that comes with love lost!
In the titled poem, Repulsion Thrust, she writes: No silk is strong enough, For your anger, It isn’t yours really, It is mine, Genetic instructions, writ In your knit brows.
Perhaps, Maggie and I both live in the gardens between the house of Science and the house of God; picking flowers from both makes us happy. Only the use of metaphors in poetry can lead us off into many very different lands of thought and gardens of comprehension.
In another poem, Black Dog One, Magdalene is waiting for a bus (this in itself is a metaphor for contemplating the passage of time; all is quiet except for the lonely howls of an old black dog neglected by his master; maybe, like most of us, she is feeling neglected and unloved herself.
in her poem, Faster-than-Light, she describes times passing by the sound of vocal cords no longer vibrating; what a great metaphor for the loneliness that comes with love lost!
September 19, 2018
Such amazing views regarding artificial intelligence. The book hints how, at some points, we’ve blindly made a god out of AI. The fact that it improves our world could only be partially hopeful once we look at it from the other side. It’s quite true that no one could imagine what happened if AI didn’t know their boundaries.
It’s such a fun and smart book to devour, even for the ones who hardly get into Sci-fi poetry; also, there’s more than just that!
It’s such a fun and smart book to devour, even for the ones who hardly get into Sci-fi poetry; also, there’s more than just that!
July 18, 2011
Repulsion Thrust by Magdalena Ball (Dec 3, 2009)
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• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Bewrite Books (December 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781906609306
• ISBN-13: 978-1906609306
• ASIN: 1906609306
eBook provided me by Magdalena Ball, author.
This book by Magdalena Ball is her first full length poetry collection of many varied subjects including, dogs, cats, math, tending gardens to evolving insects; she writes about healing. In the Equinox, she says…the world opens her uterus and births the morning. Wonderful imagery in this and Pie in the Sky. I enjoyed her Repulsion Thrust, the titled poem. From one poem to another she takes quantum leaps into a woman’s experiences with loving, living in an imperfect body, betrayal and eventual forgiveness.
In the titled poem, Repulsion Thrust, she writes: No silk is strong enough, For your anger, It isn’t yours really, It is mine, Genetic instructions, writ In your knit brows
Perhaps, Maggie and I both live in the gardens between the house of Science and the house of God; picking flowers from both makes us happy. Only the use of metaphors in poetry can lead us off into many very different lands of thought and gardens of comprehension.
In another poem, Black Dog One, Magdalene is waiting for a bus (this in itself is a metaphor for contemplating the passage of time; all is quiet except for the lonely howls of an old black dog neglected by his master; maybe, like most of us, she is feeling neglected and unloved herself;
In her poem, Faster-than-Light, she describes times passing by the sound of vocal cords no longer vibrating; what a great metaphor for the loneliness that comes with love lost!
In her poem, Omphalos , according to the ancient Greeks, Zeus, sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at the navel or the center of the world. She writes how illness creeps across the brow and travels to the navel or center of our being; writing surely now… you know something about yourself!;
We all learn from adversity that we’re stronger when it comes to surviving that which effects to the core of our very being.
Black Dog Two reminds me how we humans are vulnerable to amnesia and Alzheimer’s when we age; how our childhood wounds are all reopened when we become our parents’ care keepers;
Assault by a Black Hole is like many of her poems - - not fiction-based. There is not much we can do but watch and be afraid, as the universe evicts some galaxies to make room for new ones. We’re all hoping earth will be spared intervention from the phenomena of the black holes and all their chaos.
I enjoyed the Idea Virus. Ideas are indeed, contagious like viruses. They crawl around the net waiting to land at an unsuspecting mailbox. The author says, tell me you want this, it won’t cost a thing, not up front anyway…
Maggie’s poetry is simple and easy to read. I’m not a scientist-type, so I read more love and womanly introspection in her poetry. The metaphors she uses may be space-age driven but what she doesn’t say is all about love, achieving wellness with forethought and love.
I am happy to recommend this awesome and varied collection to all ages, including families, teenagers and grandparents, with Five Stars for Amazon.
by Joyce White
Sculpting the Heart Book Reviews
www.wingedforhealing.com
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November 30, 2009Find out more about Repulsion Thrust and check out the free mini-book here: http://bewrite.net/mm5/FlippingBooks/RepulsionThrust/index.html.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews