Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy by Darlene M. Javar

Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy is not your run-of-the-mill, saccharin sweet collection of mother poems. Instead, Javar gives the reader a glimpse into her mother’s imperfect life through carefully crafted poems that weave a tapestry of poignant moments that defined her. The complexity of each piece is accessible to the reader through Javar’s straightforward language, deliberate word choices, and visual imagery.

–Jacquolyn McMurray, author of Sheltered from Love and Mele Kalikimaka: Sweet Hawaiian Romances

Kaona in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi means hidden meaning. Many of Darlene’s poems (on the first read through) are sweet stories of growing up surrounded by family in small town rural Hawaiʻi. But when you read them again, you might start to notice there is more to each poem, some kaona slipped into each stanza, sprinkled among the descriptions. This is a poem collection where readers will find emotional depth, nuance, and surprise. Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy will entertain, enlighten and delight!

–Kristin Noelle Wolfgang, author of Star of My Heart and 102 Reading Response Lessons.

Patsy’s Gingerbread Fantasy include very thought-provoking poems highlighting many types of relationships in families, especially as the ups and the downs of life cause them to evolve. Poems on the health struggles of a loved one and eventual passing bring to mind events in my extended family and comparisons of the similar and different ways such are handled. On a lighter note, the title poem provides a surprise ending.

–Diane B. Revell, Hawaii Writers Guild President, for 30+ years authored technical documentation and articles as an aerospace software engineer and manager. Has published poetry in the Kohala Mountain News and currently publishes poetry in Latitudes.

Darlene Javar has been known to say that it’s “not a natural inclination” for her to write a tranquil poem. Judging by the poems in this chapbook, she has spoken the honest truth. Like a slap in the face, these superbly crafted poems will wake you from the superficial comfort of daily life and immerse you into the hard realities of the life and death of the author’s own mother, a “local” woman of Hawaii. Intended as a loving celebration of her mother’s “passions, pain and perseverance,” Javar’s poems also capture the unique grief of losing one’s mother and then finding a way to move on.

–Joy Fisher, co-author of First Words, a book of feminist poetry, and Public Relations Director of Hawaii Writers Guild.