poems

Norine Spurling's poems reflect a lifetime of attention to experience, to feeling, to thought, which she shapes into words. Her luscious images are color drenched: "milk stained sky", "carmine wash", "bird calls/ a turquoise song", "fading sunset's garnet cast". She uses myth, travel, people to probe for their meanings. Her poems of loss break the heart, though she is unafraid to collect those who passed in the honest assessment of all they meant to her. She surprises the reader with poems that startle and make new. We can understand the "vinegar bones of yesterday" though no one has quite said it like that before. In these poems she carefully elucidates the stages of a woman's life and carefully reflects on all she has known. This beautiful book will call us again and again to enjoy not only the visual imagery but also the sounds of place, time, and memory.

- Linda Drajem, Professor of English, SUNY College at Buffalo