Earth, My Witness by Magdalena Montagne
$19.99
Along with the vivid natural landscape that inhabits these poems, there are many fine portraits (both light and dark) of family and relationship, of memory and obsession. I’m drawn by their clean lines and images, their various rhythms and narratives. Check out “Learning to Speak Poetry”, or “White Dwarves and Black Holes”, “Two Years After She Is Gone”, many others. This is a fine collection.
–Joseph Millar
“From “The silent chase of an unchaste boy” to “the darkness I was born into” and from “Sorrow lives in my mother’s kitchen” to “What we could not speak in this life, can we speak in the next” and more, so much more, Magdalena Montagne’s poems bring us into the presence of not only a rich inner life but a rich ear attuned to make music out of even the most sorrowful things a life may give. Through that singing, Montagne transforms experience, raises and transforms it, and in that way takes her power back so damn beautifully. You’ll want to keep listening and in that way heal whatever wrongs were done to you and honor your life’s goodness as she honors hers.”
–Patrice Vecchione
Magdalena Montagne sweeps us into her passionate and brave life. The poems, with the soft power of a tide, carry us through the poet’s fraught childhood and into earthy and sometimes brutal sex; and, with unflagging devotion to the act of being, come to rest in healing. Among the earliest poems, we hear that her father treated the poet and her sister as, “His little wives to be fucked.” And her mother is portrayed, “slender in her lace slip/before the gas stove/stirring the pot slowly/tapping out an S. O. S.” As a young woman, the poet finds solace in sorrow: “When I despaired the earth held me.” At the last she creates forgiveness–simple, profound, delicately expressed: “To say. I give you this now with arms extended. Like a child’s gift: I give you everything.” When the tide that engulfed us retreats, we are left with compassion and celebration engendered by the forthright, beautifully written poetry of this collection.
–David Swanger
Description
Earth, My Witness
by Magdalena Montagne
$19.99, Full-length, paper
978-1-64662-253-5
2020
An east coast native, Magdalena Montagne moved to California to attend the University of California at Santa Cruz and has lived on the west coast ever since. A poetry teacher and workshop facilitator for students of all ages, Magdalena brings Community Poetry Circles to libraries in Santa Cruz County and her WisdomVerseSM program to residents in assisted living facilities throughout the Monterey Bay area on California’s central coast. Magdalena also works as an editor and book coach, and teaches ongoing, private poetry workshops at her home. She lives in the Santa Cruz mountains with her husband and daughter, and their cat, Snowshoe. Find out more at www.poetrycirclewithmagdalena.com.
John –
I feel that ‘When I despaired, Earth held me.’ in Magdalena Montagne’s poem ‘Earth, My Witness’ is impressive to me. There were times when I thought that too. And “I know the earth and I am sad” by ‘Pablo Neruda’, which Magdalena Montagne quoted before writing the content of her poem. I also agree with the content of the sentence, and I like it very much.