Tag: poetry

Review in Scintilla

Sarah Russell5 Comments

My thanks to Scintilla.Info for a wonderful review of my poetry collection. Here it is:

Book Review: I lost summer somewhere, Sarah Russell

I lost summer somewhere, Sarah Russell

Poetry: I lost summer somewhere, Sarah Russell

Local (State College, PA) poet Sarah Russell has given us a collection of poems that are heartfelt and moving. I lost summer somewhere is poignant, elegant, and sometimes emotionally raw. Reading it drew me into a world of love and loss, of new love found, of letting go of an aging parent piece by piece, of being with someone at their most vulnerable point, of watching granddaughters grow into a world we could never have imagined. At times it was a nerve-wracking white-knuckled journey through life. But it is hard to find someone relate that journey with the grace, beauty, and dignity that Russell achieves.

Anyone who has ever been in love can both relate to and laugh with her poem, “If I Had Three Lives.” She starts,

“If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two.”

This humorous look at love then goes on to imagine her life where she did not marry him: writing, reading lots of books, vacationing in Maine, practicing yoga…and then admitting,

“And I’d wonder sometimes / if I’d ever find you.”

This quirky love poem acknowledges that marriage has changed her in ways that might not always meet her ideal (“I’d be thinner in that life, vegan”), but in two of three lives she would choose him and in the third life she’d long for him. Honestly, that’s more than a lot of us get!

The titular poem is a metaphor for aging. The poet realizes that she has entered a stage of life when geese have abandoned their nests and wildflowers have finished their blooms. I love how she says to the geese as they leave,

“I’ll stay here, I tell them, I’ll air out / cedared cardigans. chop carrots / for the soup tonight, cross / the threshold of the equinox, / try not to stumble.”

Any of us watching the years spin by faster and faster can appreciate both the sense of loss and the acceptance of our future, whatever that may be.

Although the poems offer much to every reader, I believe that women would especially appreciate Russell’s perspectives. She writes as the wife who watches a marriage crumble, as the mother there with a daughter making a difficult choice and living with that, as the grandmother advising her middle-school granddaughter. Sometimes, like in Learning to Play Baseball, she is the bemused woman struggling to communicate with a man. She is the woman watching herself age, falling in love again, appreciating new seasons of life.

That being said, this book is not “for” women or men. It is for anyone who loves language, who loves poetry, for anyone who has loved and anyone who is watching an aging parent decline, for anyone who has enjoyed an “Indian Summer” of life and found a second love and held a child. Sarah Russell’s poems are beautiful and passionate, and I lost summer somewhere is a special collection.

46 Catherine St.

Sarah Russell28 Comments

From my poetry collection, I lost summer somewhere.

 

I hid behind the spirea bushes over there, by the steps,
chewed the bitter leaves, watched old Grandma Yonkers
in her lace up shoes and cotton hose mince slow,
slow, with her squeak-wheeled shopping cart,
an hour to the store and back. She never saw me,
or at least she didn’t say. The house is run down now.
Probably was then too, but kids don’t notice shabby
when it’s theirs. Screens are rusty, porch sags,
sidewalk buckled higher from the oak. Dad said
it should come out, but it’s outlived him and will outlive
me as well. Its acorn caps made high-pitched squeals
between my thumbs I crooked just so. We’d rake
its leather leaves in piles at the curb, light fires in the twilight,
watch embers spit into the blueblack dusk,
the scent of autumn in my hair.

Sarah Russell
First published in I lost summer somewhere
Photo Source

 

My First Collection is published!

Sarah Russell30 Comments

I’m thrilled to announce that my first collection I lost summer somewhere has just been published and is available at Amazon and through Kelsay Books.

russell_front_april_19_revised_360x

Here are some of the great things my fellow poets have said about it.

“Melancholy, exuberance, nostalgia, fulfillment, contentment, longing – Sarah Russell hits all the spots, and there isn’t one poem where a woman won’t be able to identify in some way. She’s singing all our songs, putting into magical words things we felt so often but never knew how to tell. Deep sadness matched by laughter, gentleness, love and a sense of adventure. It was a privilege being there with her, living what she remembers, identifying with every line.”

Rose Mary Boehm, author of Tangents, From the Ruhr to Somewhere Near Dresden, and Peru Blues

*

“Sarah Russell brings us into her world, a world of “dream-filled summer nights,” where “leaves are October butterflies.” Russell’s poems sing the important moments of life. It’s a song that stays in your mind, drawing you back to the poems again and again.”

Nina Bennett, author of Mix Tape and The House of Yearning

*

“Sarah Russell’s poems don’t have to crawl under your skin – they’ve always been there. If you haven’t known a suicide, or gone through divorce or cancer, you’ve known the fear. If you’ve never had a love you’d marry twice if you had three lives, you’ve felt the longing. Russell may have lost summer somewhere, but she has found what makes us human.”

Alarie Tennille, author of Waking on the Moon and Running Counterclockwise

Cusp

Sarah Russell26 Comments

Yesterday’s south wind rushed warmth
to February snow. Today the earth
is boggy with new grass, tattered white
in crannies on north sides of things.
Daffodils finger their way toward light,
and old women’s feet no longer tremble
on their way to market.

 

Sarah Russell
First published in Your Daily Poem
Painting by James Coates
For Real Toads TuesdayPlatform

 

Ephemera

Sarah Russell26 Comments

I sit at the water’s edge,
draw circles in the sand.

It was almost too civil. Last night
we walked down the beach
to the crab shack,
tied bibs around our necks,
and over a bucket of clams and corn
decided who got what.

Circles, short-lived in the tide,
my wedding ring in the dresser drawer.

 

Sarah Russell
First published in  Red Eft Review
Image source

Mornings after breakfast

Sarah Russell40 Comments

This poem was just published in Red Eft Review. My thanks to editor Corey D. Cook for taking three of my poems for publication!

Mother hangs her tea bags on the door,
winds the strings around the knob. Drips,
like paw prints, stain the old wood floor.
I don’t know why she does it. She never
uses them again. After her tea she gets
the big pot and scrubs vegetables for soup.
Her knife is rhythmic against the cutting board,
her felt slippers scuffing from counter to stove
and back again. I see her mouth move sometimes
as she sways, mincing, mincing her life.

Sarah Russell
First published in Red Eft Review
Painting by Dmitri Matkovski
For Poetry Pantry

Chancing Love

Sarah Russell36 Comments


Not a dive’s precision arc.
Instead a lemming run and plunge,
oblivious to depth,
temperature, whether
water’s in the pool.
Cynics shake their heads.
“Only a fool…” they say.
“Yes, yes!” I answer,
and drop my towel.

– Sarah Russell
First published in Shot Glass Journal
For Poets United Poetry Pantry
Photo Source
                      

Confession

Sarah Russell55 Comments

There’s a spider in the bathtub.
I saw him last night, and he’s still there
this morning, though I gave him fair warning
when I brushed my teeth before bed.
I need to take a shower.
But there’s a SPIDER.
In the BATHTUB.
My Dr. Schweitzer is arguing with my Eek.
He’s small –
smaller than a shirt button –
and round and 8 legs look like 3 too many.
But he’s in the BATHTUB.
Where I SHOWER.
NAKED.
I turn on the water, and he wiggles
a couple of legs but the spray doesn’t hit him,
so I don’t get a pass from Karma.
Then my Eek takes over,
and I get a piece of toilet paper,
and he wiggles 2 legs again but doesn’t run
so my Eek doesn’t get to plead self-defense.
I try to make it painless –
a squish and done – but then I wonder
if he was just trying to say hello,
and the shower’s kind of lonely
without him in there waving at me.

– Sarah Russell
For Poets United Poetry Pantry
First published in Your Daily Poem
Photo source

At 3 a.m.

Sarah Russell41 Comments

This poem is a departure for me. I found myself channeling Hemingway after reading for the third or fourth time A Moveable Feast — perhaps the best and least known guidebook for Paris. My thanks to Scot at Rusty Truck for publishing it this week.

At 3 a.m.
after one more day
without words, Paris
takes you in like a whore,
not surprised you’re back
for another fuck in the dark.
November. Brittle rain
scrapes the bone.
You walk the sheen of cobbles
to the Seine, where bodies,
freshly guillotined, once floated,
heads left behind in baskets,
past the great cathedral, gargoyled,
buttressed, to the boîte
on St. Louis where absinthe
and jazz make love, and a girl
comes to rub against you
like she knows your name.

– Sarah Russell
first published in Rusty Truck
Photo by Nicolas Vigier