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Allbook Books is pleased to announce
the publication of:
space between, a new book of poetry by
Gertrude Halstead, Poet Laureate of Worcester.
"A circumstance does not free you, you must free yourself.
Writing poetry is a form of liberation."
- Gertrude Halstead
space between
- poems by Gertrude Halstead
- 80 pages - 5.5 x 8.5 - ISBN-13: 978-0-9818661-0-9
to order books
- or if you are in the Massachusetts area, you can contact: Eve Rifkah seavoice@mac.com
FROM THE BOOK. . .
About the Author
Gertrude Halstead was born in Germany in 1916. She escaped to France where during the war she was interned in Camp Gurs in the south of France. She volunteered as an interpreter and escaped by having the French authorities sign her release papers. She eventually made her way to Portugal where she was able to get passage on the last passenger ship, Excalibur, leaving for the United States. Her first book memories like burrs was published by Adastra Press. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was awarded Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Award, 2006, from UMass/Dartmouth. She is presently Poet Laureate of Worcester, Massachusetts, USA and recipient of a 2008 Worcester, Massachusetts, Cultural Council Fellowship Award. A song-cycle based on her poems has been composed by Mauro DePasquale for piano, cello, alto and is part of a documentary filmed by outstanding filmmaker Peter Swanson of Global Visions. The DVD can be obtained for $30 through Poetry Oasis, Inc., 11 Rosemont Rd., Worcester, MA 01605.
* * *
gifts
long fingers
of the sun
touch peaks
foothills
color all lavender
flowers rocks
falling water
later turns
the palest pink
and at dusk
boulders
become wild goats
descending
my hands
against barbed wire
* * *
flight
on the train
you had left me
a message scrawled
across brown paper
wrapping hung like
an empty garment
bag hooked in the
baggage net
overhead it all
seemed upside down
no safety from
that direction
i could not reach
anyway
having inch by inch
shrunken into
myself pacing
the moving compartment
swaying
upside down
no safety in
any direction
* * *
lunch after Picasso
blue iris
yellow velvet lipped
sips at my table
we toast Picasso periods
i coffee
she water
we part
nodding
* * *
the boy who identifies with fish
he always trusted water
how it rocked carried him
at five his father
made him hold fish
by their lips
in front of the family car
later small lightweight
strong lungs
crossing the long schoolpool
back and forth
back and forth
without surfacing
he loves the under
water more he
identifies with fish
that morning
the first day of summer
vacation he runs to
the pond and is under
the surface smooth
over him he crosses
back and forth
back and forth
on the way back
a gentle splash barely
a splash a sting a pain
barely a pain he feels
pulled his mouth
lip struggle free
he identifies with fish
* * *
Harriet
i met her
in a chinese restaurant
she talked to me
across the aisle
friends call me
Harriet
they say it suits me
better
i don't believe
them
i am married you know
language
my lover
at night
slips between
my softpressed thighs
circles the other
smooth breast
tongues my nipple
my lips until
vowelsconsonantssyllables
words sentences well
i tell you
what do you dream
* * *
© 2008 by Gertrude Halstead
* * *
Gertrude Halstead is an astonishing, powerful poet. Her images, potent as a room of pure-toned paintings, wash a reader clean inside the light of words.
- Naomi Shihab Nye author of numerous books including:
You & Yours, Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose,
A Maze Me: Poems for Girls,
19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East
In our writing workshop we have made Gertrude's last name into a verb. "To halstead" is to make a poem so spare and fine that there is no word wasted, no space that doesn't do useful work as well, each word and space integrating and speaking to the other, the poem becoming so well crafted, so adroitly made, that it resembles Gertrude's iconic kite images, a perfectly constructed work of art, seemingly fragile, but actually intensely strong and radiant, each poem virtually capable of lifting into the air with its seamless design and timeless beauty.
- John Hodgen
author of Grace, Bread Without Sorrow, In My Father's House
* * * * *
- website © 2008 Walter E. Harris III
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