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Primary Sources Paperback – August 12, 2011
by Ann Staley
This review is from: Primary Sources (Paperback)
In reviewing Ann Staley's new book of poems, "Primary Sources," it seems fitting to open with a quote from the book itself:
"To those who wake up and make music
I say: Your task is to sing for the voiceless,
to remember the cry that becomes song." *
Ms Staley's gift for remembering cries -- cries of ecstasy, pain, anger, frustration, love, gratitude and more -- is second to none, as is her gift for composing (out of these discrete notes) the song of her own existence. She maintains an almost mystical interaction with the sacred: everything from a swollen rive
r to the past kindnesses of vanished friends and lovers.
The years of her long life remain preternaturally alive and available withi
rvoyance to determine exactly which notes should be selected, how they must be arranged and played to create ringing echoes within the souls of her readers. Again and again, while reading the book, I discovered poems that touched chimes within my own experience. Her rhythms, wisdom and elegant word choices create a state of reflection, a state in which we must claim our own cries -- the joyful and the sorrowful -- and accept them into the composition of our own consciousnesses.n her inexhaustible Present; and somehow she has the clai
What a rare, outlandish concept: Write poems that are deeply felt, wisely conceived, elegantly worded and that don't take an advanced degree in cryptology to decipher.
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