Views from the Lanai by Patricia Barry

“Flame-feathered cardinals. Herons stretching their wings. A sheer blue sky reflected in a still pond. The soft sounds of rain. Through Patricia Barry’s wise and inspired poetry, we come to love what she loves. Join Patricia on her lanai, and allow her to escort you into her luminous and ever-changing world.”

–Katherine Kirkpatrick, editor of A Circle of Friends: Remembering Madeleine L’Engle

“Filled with original and precise imagery, this collection of twenty-five gorgeous poems not only captures Ms. Barry’s unique visual acuity, but her gentle metaphoric interpretation of what it means to be a newly retired and transplanted New Yorker in Florida’s world of tropical splendor. With assured insights, the author paints a cinematic portrait of her surroundings and delights in her new and exotic “microcosm of life.” A true excavator of the soul, Patricia Barry does not waste a word. This chapbook is compact in its observations of the limited boundaries from her kitchen nook to her backyard lanai, and especially the pond and golf course beyond. From this tunnelled viewpoint, the author’s “backyard guests” include all kinds of birdlife, from the all-important heron, egret, and osprey to the more infrequent mourning doves and woodpecker. There is no flying creature that escapes her notice, none that fail to teach her a lesson in transplantation and adaptation. Occasionally, we find other animal life such as an alligator, butterfly, deer, or her dogs; and there are subtle reminders of human habitation, such as a tractor, golf balls, the neighbors, and the threat of the coronavirus. Patricia Barry tells us that her “new life calls to me,” and we readers are only too lucky to be her houseguests.”

–Andrea Simon, author of Bashert: A Granddaughter’s Holocaust Quest, Esfir Is Alive, and Floating in the Neversink

When this gifted poet moved to an altogether new life from the city to Florida, she had a spiritual awakening. As she stood on her lanai facing the pond, she began month after month to observe the changing skies and the egrets, herons, ospreys. A whole new world opened within her which became this small book of deeply-felt poems. “We coexist, the birds and I,” she writes, “…turning our heads in a nod to silently acknowledge the other.” A radiant collection about self-discovery, birds and water, and the particular light that certain places hold if you are still enough to really see them.

–Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet and The Boy in the Rain. Recipient of an American Book Award