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Saudade
72 pages, Paperback
Published November 29, 2022
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About the author
Rose Mary Boehm
15 books64 followersRose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as eight poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was three times nominated for a ‘Pushcart’ and once for ‘Best of Net’. DO OCEANS HAVE UNDERWATER BORDERS? (Kelsay Books July 2022), WHISTLING IN THE DARK (Cyberwit July 2022), and SAUDADE (December 2022) are available on Amazon. Also available on Amazon is a new collection, LIFE STUFF, published by Kelsay Books November 2023.
More on Rose Mary Boehm on her website:
https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
Her Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR9f...
See her (dormant) poetry and art blog:
http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com/
Boehm is also a gifted photographer. For her photographs go to:
http://www.bilderboehm.blogspot.com/
More on Rose Mary Boehm on her website:
https://www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com/
Her Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR9f...
See her (dormant) poetry and art blog:
http://houseboathouse.blogspot.com/
Boehm is also a gifted photographer. For her photographs go to:
http://www.bilderboehm.blogspot.com/
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 24, 2024
In Rose Mary Boehm’s latest collection, Saudade, she looks back over the decades and pulls out flashes of memory and insight. The poems give glimpses into her experiences, musings, and travels. It is a trove of moments that shine like silver or weigh on the heart like stone.
The poet uses her keen eye for detail to help us travel vicariously. “In the Alpujarras – Andalucia, Spain” describes little miracles, rain in the desert, and flowers that “unfold on sand and stone, / stretching upward, offering their lives / to the pollinators.” Like so many of the pieces in this book, the resonant imagery is a jumping-off point for deeper questions: “The sun will set in an hour, the spectacle / will fold in upon itself. A question shimmers / over the yellow. Why? Life, of course, what else.”
In “A night in Paris,” she writes, “Your hands like the / ends of snake / tails entwined / in the small of / my back.” The words are vivid and loaded, so much packed between the lines. Though Boehm has a knack for tangible writing and paints a scene masterfully, her poems tend to be cinematic rather than static. In “Heat,” a woman sheds her bikini top and summons five Italian men from the sea, moving from discomfort with her “angular English body” to being the embodiment of Venus, receiving offerings of pizza, Chianti, and Limoncello.
Some of the poems feature characters spun from Boehm's imagination and powers of observation. “Quiet night on the island,” for example, is a sketch of a grumpy old man living vicariously through his lothario cat. The poet has a striking ability to find a story behind the people she crosses paths with.
Saudade is rich with engaging characters, but there are monsters too. “Would I like my past self?” is a slideshow of the stages of the poet's early life. Writing about painful moments becomes an act of reaching out, the older woman extending affection toward her awkward younger self:“ I would have held her close and told her that time would heal. / Isn’t this what they say? Isn’t it true?” Indeed, Boehm does not shy away from difficult subjects. “Baggage” directly addresses her personal burdens, both the association of Germans with Nazis and her own “childhood made from faulty pieces, / a puzzle with no satisfactory outcome.” The baggage spills forth in a cascade of nouns: “Pockmarked playgrounds, dead rabbits, / rabble, rubble, revivals, renegades, revelations.”
Ultimately, thoughts and memories are brought together in this fine collection as the poet evaluates a life well lived. Rose Mary Boehm uses writing as a way to remember and reframe events and, in the process, spin “a lot of straw into gold.”
—Sarah Carleton, author of Notes from the Girl Cave
The poet uses her keen eye for detail to help us travel vicariously. “In the Alpujarras – Andalucia, Spain” describes little miracles, rain in the desert, and flowers that “unfold on sand and stone, / stretching upward, offering their lives / to the pollinators.” Like so many of the pieces in this book, the resonant imagery is a jumping-off point for deeper questions: “The sun will set in an hour, the spectacle / will fold in upon itself. A question shimmers / over the yellow. Why? Life, of course, what else.”
In “A night in Paris,” she writes, “Your hands like the / ends of snake / tails entwined / in the small of / my back.” The words are vivid and loaded, so much packed between the lines. Though Boehm has a knack for tangible writing and paints a scene masterfully, her poems tend to be cinematic rather than static. In “Heat,” a woman sheds her bikini top and summons five Italian men from the sea, moving from discomfort with her “angular English body” to being the embodiment of Venus, receiving offerings of pizza, Chianti, and Limoncello.
Some of the poems feature characters spun from Boehm's imagination and powers of observation. “Quiet night on the island,” for example, is a sketch of a grumpy old man living vicariously through his lothario cat. The poet has a striking ability to find a story behind the people she crosses paths with.
Saudade is rich with engaging characters, but there are monsters too. “Would I like my past self?” is a slideshow of the stages of the poet's early life. Writing about painful moments becomes an act of reaching out, the older woman extending affection toward her awkward younger self:“ I would have held her close and told her that time would heal. / Isn’t this what they say? Isn’t it true?” Indeed, Boehm does not shy away from difficult subjects. “Baggage” directly addresses her personal burdens, both the association of Germans with Nazis and her own “childhood made from faulty pieces, / a puzzle with no satisfactory outcome.” The baggage spills forth in a cascade of nouns: “Pockmarked playgrounds, dead rabbits, / rabble, rubble, revivals, renegades, revelations.”
Ultimately, thoughts and memories are brought together in this fine collection as the poet evaluates a life well lived. Rose Mary Boehm uses writing as a way to remember and reframe events and, in the process, spin “a lot of straw into gold.”
—Sarah Carleton, author of Notes from the Girl Cave
February 4, 2023
Rose Mary Boehm’s newest poetry collection, Saudade, invites the reader to accompany the poet as she looks back with wisdom and understanding on her life experiences and observations. This journey takes place in many different countries, as befitting a poet who has lived in many places. While the notion of saudade typically signifies a melancholy longing for the nostalgia of one’s past or a world that didn’t actually exist, in the case of these poems, it relates to that complicated feeling when an event or a person has passed out of one’s life—through death or time--, but is saddened by the negatives that accompany every positive memory. Boehm’s direct voice doesn’t shy at the grim details, but her images and resilient spirit raise it all into art that transforms the reader’s own life.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews