The Language of Tides: New & Selected Poems
by Lois Parker Edstrom
176 poems ~ 233 pages
Price: $24.00
Publisher: MoonPath Press
ISBN 978-1-936657-64-3
Available through MoonPath Press, Amazon, or at web site:
loisparkeredstrom.com


ABOUT THE BOOK:


The book is a collection of thirty new poems and selected poems from Edstrom’s seven previous books. Many of the poems are set in the natural beauty of Whidbey Island, Washington where the author lives and rejoices in small town living, family, and ordinary moments. Ekphrastic poems are included in two of the poet’s previous collections.


ADVANCE PRAISE:


Eschewing grandiloquence, Edstrom’s poems take a pensive stance towards the immediate, the “ordinary,” while quietly rooted in the rhythms of the natural world. A master of simplicity, her prosody carries a balanced, musical, clear stream of language with understated authority. “Poetry pinned me to bliss,” sums up the poet, in full possession of her craft.
–Loraine Healy, author of Mostly Luck (MoonPath Press)

In The Language of Tides, Lois Parker Edstrom has gathered over a decade of everyday poems, seasonal poems, ekphrastic poems, poems set in the real light of small-town life, and more. And most everyone joyfully intimates how ordinary moments, which are also our moments, belong to the tide in which our particular forms rise and fall. Edstrom poses the poet’s wager–experience your timelessness for the price of embracing your fleetingness, as do, she suggests, the autumn leaves “skittering along the road like brown-robed monks.”
–Jed Myers, author of The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press)


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Lois Parker Edstrom, a retired nurse, is the author of two chapbooks and six full length collections of poetry. Her poetry has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac and featured in American Life in Poetry. Edstrom’s career in the medical field and her poetic passion coalesced when her poetry appeared in Poems in the Waiting Room, a publication furnished to hospitals and doctors’ offices in New Zealand. Her poetry has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies, been translated into Braille, and adapted to dance. She lives with her husband on Whidbey Island, an island off the coast of Washington State.


FROM THE BOOK:


The Question of Brokenness
by Lois Parker Edstrom

Some call them flags, these iris’
that unfurl their banners from sturdy,
green staffs: purple, peach, white
and yellow as if each represents
a kingdom of beauty.

They rise from knobby beginnings
faithful and resilient, yet left
to their own devices, in their eagerness
to grow, the roots become tangled
and crowded into a tight, limiting mass.
They must be broken apart, planted
separately, given a new start.

How hard it is to disturb what seems
to be thriving, yet we never know
what lies below the surface until
we dig a little deeper–how kind faces,
shy smiles may cover a tangle
of hurt, bound by despair.

Some think we are all broken,
but I’m not sure that is true.
Perhaps we are frail and imperfect
and vulnerable to brokenness,

but we can rise from shattered expectations,
open to a place of deeper understanding
and the freedom to launch new beginnings.


 


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