The Carpenter’s Lament in Winter by Antointte Libro
$14.49
“Only dust and sunlight now / on the wooden counter,” so ends Antoinette Libro’s haiku about a carpenter’s “old workshop,” the carpenter long-deceased. Not only is there great visual precision in these lines, there is also a profound emotional resonance. In a way these images represent this collection as a whole. Here are poems about the mortal dust we came from and return to. Here also are poems about the light needed to see the mortal facts of our existence. And here are poems about the work we do, the love we offer to one another, the shaping labor that life in our fallen world requires. Above all, here in these lines, and in these poems overall, we see the kind of beauty that reminds us of what matters and what lasts.
–Fred Marchant, Author of The Looking House (Graywolf Press)
Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]
In one of the early poems in Antoinette Libro’s latest book, she repeats the line: “What is it about this picture/that makes one want to cry?” I think those lines are true of the poems in this book as well. These well-crafted, beautifully-polished poems sneak past all our defenses and often bring us to tears. These are poems of celebration and joy, of grief and loss. What a gem of a book! I love it!
—Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Winner of American Book Award for All That Lies Between Us
Ancient Chinese poet-painters brushed atmospheric landscapes with ink on silk scrolls; every detail harmonious with universal oneness. The Carpenter’s Lament in Winter is a collection of masterfully understated poems embracing oneness with delicacy and awe. In a language not reserved for gods and goddesses, which we cannot speak, Antoinette Libro’s clarity, brevity, and lightness honors the East; honors human emotions with Western classical restraint. I gave myself over to the aroma rising in the poems of The Carpenter’s Lament in Winter. I heard in the cricket’s song a host of voices from a bygone era, saw ghosts dancing with the shadows in the hazy fragrant moonlight; dust and sunshine on the wooden counter; smelled the pungent red geraniums. I invite the reader to allow their own memories to surface in the deepening nocturne waiting in the distant harbor where all is mystery.
–Albert Tacconelli, Perhaps Fly
Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]
Description
The Carpenter’s Lament in Winter
by Antointte Libro
$14.49, paper
Antoinette Libro has published her poetry and short fiction in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies. She won Third Prize in the prestigious Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest for 2011 and has received numerous Honorable Mentions and Editor’s Choice awards over the years. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University. As Professor Emerita of Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, she now divides her time between New Jersey and St. Augustine, Florida, where she lives with her husband and silver toy poodle.
Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]
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