“I enjoy the range and how visual the poems are. The Andrew Wyeths, for example, capture the paintings I have always responded to. Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel portrays shifting moods and stories that play like notes on the piano.”
–Gillian Haven, artist and author/illustrator of Lydia and Pandora
With these wry, agile, and deeply felt poems, Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel announces herself as a poet committed both to the craft of poetry and to its power to explore the meanings that are to be found in every aspect of life. Her acumen and commitment are etched into every line of Matrimonies. It is a collection that prompts the question: where can I read more of this poet’s work?
–Kevin McCaffrey, author of Laughing Cult
Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel’s nearly magical cadences transport the reader to a new aural dimension that is not enjoyed in most current poetry. Combined with her sonorous language, the reader could overlook the stark details of her narratives. This is a good thing as it forces the reader to slow down to be aware of all of Lloyd-Kimbrel’s honed skills in this eminently worthwhile collection.
–Gary Metras, founder of Adastra Press and author of Vanishing Points, River Voice II, and Francis d’ Assisi 2008.
Elizabeth Dominique Lloyd-Kimbrel’s nimbly crafted and keenly felt poems commingle myth-fluent musings and ekphrastic eyefuls with soul-mating synergy. Via an exquisitely original poetic mind and voice, Matrimonies braves and basks in the wedding of nature and culture, illuminated by the golden slants of light of literary, artistic, and familial forebears and companions. These poems engage in the serious play of time-travel, reconstructing reminisced scents and echoed sounds, roses to rosaries, places of memorable meetings, stops and starts and returns. The strategic repetitions with twists, the structures of stanzas and line breaks, and sometimes poke-and-push indentations, reveal a rich lexicon of technique, form, and mechanics. Lloyd-Kimbrel’s images flow, glow, and linger long after reading: from the sensible sensation of a buttery, unadorned (even archetypal) snack cracker to those madly rushing, barely punctuated, wedding waters.
–Anne Ciecko, videopoet and associate professor of film (UMass/Amherst Dept of Communication)
edlk –
SAMPLE POEM —
ANNA KUERNER
after Wyeth
Sun streamed through
the panes and withered hands
veins marked blue
to bring long-dead warmth
from weather
forever to be frozen.
Dim eyesight
stared out at snow
glared fierce white
by the incessant sun.
It had pained
the eyes to look but when
the day waned
the loneliness hurt more
so the hands
again went into ice
and golden bands
of light gave way to dark.
— Elizabeth Dominique Lloyd-Kimbrel