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by L.B. Williams ISBN:978-1-63534-390-8. 28 pages 14 poems Price: $14.99 Publisher: Finishing Line Press To Order from Finihsing Line Press ADVANCE PRAISE: How casually we say to ourselves and others that we all know that life is short and nothing is permanent. But if we turn, for example, toward those we love, our parents, or spouse, or children, and try to hold in mind the idea that impermanence only is lasting, then we start to realize how difficult yet centrally important this thought is. Here in these beautiful poems are the lyrics of the Dharma, the songs that show us how hard it is to find and stay on the path, and how liberating and meaning-full it can be when we do. —Fred Marchant, Author of Said Not Said (Graywolf Press, 2017) L.B. Williams is a writer who understands the way poetry can open doors. Her work is candid, weaving together threads of the past alongside questions about the future. The moments of revelation accumulate into a lovely panorama of the human experience. —Lisa Jarnot, author of Joie de Vivre: Selected Poems 1992-2012 (City Lights Press) Lisa Williams shows us a world split open, a glimpse inside a rock of violet quartz. Violet, because this collection is printed with spirituality, melancholy, and the colour of mourning, watered down by tears. On the asphalt of New-York, death casts its shadow: there, where the cement of the foundations crumbles away, in the megalopolis which does not stop swallowing itself, the internal mapping remains, memories populated with ghosts. But will streets numbers and names be enough to anchor the soul worn out by the seasons? Is not evanescence inexorable? Guided by Buddhist wisdom, the woman follows her path, Sutras become entangled with her own chant, root and free her altoget- her, revealing her true identity as poet: that of a disciple of Bashô, a «wind-swept spirit ». —Maia Brami, author of Letter to the Poet a book Homage to Jean Cocteau, (Belin publishing), ABOUT THE AUTHOR L.B.WILLIAMS is the author of the memoir, Letters to Virginia Woolf, (Hamilton Books, 2005) www.letterstovirginiawoolf.com, The Artist as Outsider in the Novels of Toni Morrison and Virginia Woolf (Greenwood Press, 2000). Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Washington Square, Gargoyle, The Mom Egg Review, Sunrise from Blue Thunder (A Pirene's Fountain Anthology and For She is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers. Her poetry chapbook, The Eighth Phrase, was published by Porkbelly Press (2014), and the poetry chapbook, Sky Studies, was published by Finishing Line Press (2014). She is Professor of Literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey. FROM THE BOOK Where Do They Go? by L.B. Williams What if we hear the sound of a cuckoo from Kyoto and long for a city where we already are? It's a melody on a radio, something familiar but forgotten that makes me miss what I already know is gone. In the afternoon a butterfly mingles with the screen outside my room and I wonder what is a wind-swept spirit.
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