How I Went into the Woods
Poems by Lennart Lundh
70 Poems ~ 89 pages
Price: $20.00
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN #: 978-1-63980-485-6
To Order: Kelsaybooks.com
ABOUT THE BOOK:
How I Went into the Woods, is about ideas. It is about sources of poetry, sources of painting. It is about poetic craftsmanship. If, as artists, whether in word or in paint we are asked: “How do you decide what to write about?” or, “What inspires you to paint certain subjects?” Place, in their hands, a copy of Lennart Lundh’s latest collection of ekphrastic poems … and leave it at that!
ADVANCE PRAISE:
In this beautiful collection of ekphrastic poems, Lennart Lundh eloquently dives beneath the brushstroke and behind the lens, taking us on a journey where there are no answers, only endless possibilities. Possibilities that bend and wander. Possibilities that dance for love or dance between falling bombs, but dance, nonetheless. Possibilities that brush the dust off the clouded mirror, allowing us to reflect back onto us. In the closing line of the poem, “The Bride” the title character “sits alone with all the possibilities,” and, under Lundh’s nuanced vision, so do we.
–Keith Allison, author of Continuity Flaw and Screaming with My Indoor Voice
Lennart Lundh’s How I Went into the Woods is an exceptional and inspired collection of ekphrastic poems. Lundh deeply inhabits the works that inspire his writing–mostly paintings but other varied visual arts as well–and uncovers haunting hidden narratives. The results are lovely, evocative poems, which stand on their own but will likely have readers eagerly searching for the sources to “scratch that itch” and further experience the dialogue between artwork, poem, reader and viewer.
–Jennifer Dotson, founder Highland Park Poetry.org and author of Late Night Talk Show Fantasy and Other Poems
How I Went into the Woods is rich with tender (yet unembellished) vignettes, hard truths, & vivid visual brilliance. This new collection of ekphrastic poems is brilliantly “Well Seen and Well Said,” as Beckett might write. Its astute poetry makes us see and feel its scenes as a personal experience, using language to distribute the wealth of human experience and show a deep sense of acceptance of loss, death, self, and the world as it is: life on life’s terms.
–David Leo Sirois, Canadian poet, author of Humbledoves (poems to pigeons & plants) and host of Spoken Word Onlin, the Zoom continuation of Spoken Word Paris.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lennart Lundh is a poet, photographer, short-fictionist, and historian. His work has appeared internationally since 1965, including poetry in sixty-eight anthologies and numerous issues of more than ninety journals. Over two hundred readings of his work are archived on YouTube. Len served in Vietnam with the Navy’s Amphibious Ready Group Bravo during 1968 and 1969, and he was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in 1970. Post-service, he earned a BA and an MA in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from Northeastern Illinois University. He and Lin, his high school sweetheart, are great-grandparents, and reside in Northeastern Illinois.
FROM THE BOOK:
Where Art Comes From
by Lennart Lundh
She sets the book down, rises
to stand at the window and gaze
beyond the building facing hers,
beyond the people seen there
and deep into their possibilities.
Walking to work in the morning,
she pauses to pet the butcher’s dog,
stops to look as if for the first time
at the travel agent’s bright posters,
honestly hears the street cars pass.
Each customer as the day goes on
catches her attention with a phrase,
a way of walking or holding a pose.
She thinks of them as characters
fitting a story together, or not.
On the way home she decides it,
stops at the department store
and quickly spends all her savings.
The keys of the typewriter feel good
as she starts her first story that night.
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