Sign-In
Cart
A Shared and Sacred Space
Paperback
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 163980532X
ISBN13: 9781639805327
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Published: Jun 7 2024
Pages: 114
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781639805327
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Published: Jun 7 2024
Pages: 114
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
I've long been haunted by the dualities of Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas' poetry: life and death, forgetting and the preservation of memory, resisting death while recognizing its beauty... Implied by the title, these poems are divided into the shared and the sacred, two large and meaningful parts to the collection. The shared poems are written mostly in sonnet form, as if Grellas' poems are also sharing a form with late traditional poets, and they focus on family stories and heirlooms, implying the shared aspects of family, meaningful relationships and friendships, and of course, art. The second section, the sacred, focuses more on personal stories and the more personal takeaways from shared experiences, like how one perceives the family dynamic compared to another. This duality of the public and private proves to be haunting, especially in the poems that celebrate secrecy and memories never shared (until with us, the readers).
What I've discovered after reading A Shared and Sacred Space is how each poem carries with it its own unique duality: its personal and collective power. I read some of these poems on an individual basis and loved them as they stood on their own, but now that I've read them as a part of a larger collection, I now better appreciate the larger resonance of these poems and the echoes they form across the collection. From love, motherhood, family heirlooms, and traditions, to religion and mythological echoes, to the hardships of feminism, mental and physical ailments, and the forever haunting loss of our furry loved ones, this labyrinth of humanness unveiled is a stunning collection of personal, shared, and confessional poetry that we surely all can relate to, and celebrate.
Grellas lets us take a glimpse into the most treasured and personal aspects of her life, and like an ofrenda, a photo album, a guest list-by the end of the collection, all of us readers are those who have signed the guest book, leaving behind our own small contributions to poetry's collective memory and taking something of Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas' with us.
-McKenzie Lynn Tozan, Lit Shark Magazine
Also from
Stevenson Grellas, Carol Lynn
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
$33.00
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
$18.00
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
$17.10
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
$17.10
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
$19.94
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
$17.06
A Bowl of Goodness: Nourishing Poems with a Side of Soup, Celebrating Community, Friendship, and Resilience
Jackson, Major
Hardcover
$22.50
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
$17.99