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Gathering Sunlight
by Silvia Scheibli & Patty Dickson Pieczka
Pages: 104
Price: $24.00
Publisher: The Bitter Oleander Press
ISBN: 978-1-7346535-7-1
To Order: www.barnesandnoble.com
or: www.amazon.com
or: www.spdbooks.org
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas
In Gathering Sunlight, two poets from divergent backgrounds and contrasting styles, combine their skills. The result is an engaging and wise collection which sheds fresh light on the human condition. The book is all about the hard work of “gathering.” Scheibli and Pieczka, have something to say. They are realists. Their poems face life with all its challenges, failures, and sufferings. Poetry is a sanctuary of sorts. Poetry can and should be enjoyed for its magic show of language. However, I hasten to point out that poetry, for Scheibli and Pieczka, is also useful. My goal in this review is to share the harvest Gathering Sunlight has had in my life.
Backgrounds
Among the standout features of Gathering Sunlight are interviews with each poet by the publisher, The Bitter Oleander Press, (BOP). Digesting these educational interviews prior to reading the poems increased my enjoyment. From the interview I learned about Scheibli’s love for tropical areas of Mexico and Ecuador. I learned that she is an avid “birder” having compiled a listing of over 500 exotic birds during her intercontinental travels. I learned about a real-life mystical figure named “Chakira,” whose influence permeates much of Scheibli’s work.
Patty Dickson Pieczka’s interview with BOP is no less interesting and brings out both similarities and differences between the two artists. “Beyond These Poems There Be Dragons,” introduces Pieczka’s superb contributions to Gathering Sunlight. I was fascinated by her response to why she chose those particular words. Additionally, Pieczka like Scheibli, is a woman of the earth. She spends time in Shawnee National Forest near her native southern Illinois home. She avers, “Nature has always been important to my sanity and spirituality and is often woven throughout my poetry.
My favorite part of the interviews is when each poet discusses her unique views on the writing process. I found their practical insights helpful.
Poems by Silvia Scheibli
Part I–Duende poems
Chakira, tell me once again
Oh, tell me how the moon
opened your eyes and showed you
a change in consciousness
How you wished that every coyote
should have a black-tipped tail
How the oriole’s hood
was dark until you changed it
to reflect indigo sunlight
Nothing appears natural now–
Now you dream the raven in silver.
How do you dream only in silver, Chakira?
Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca has described the duende form “as a force not a labour, a struggle, not a thought.” Further via Lorca, duende is “an upsurging, inside, from the soles of the feet.” The duende, new to this reviewer, allows the muse to basically take over and drive the poem. One more example:
My friend, Chakira, gave me her chisme
“Listen,” she said.
Pelicans glide on wings
as straight as paddle-boards.
Aero-dynamic frigates ascend
immense, azure skies.
Supplicant, boat-tailed grackles
seek verdant, queen palms.
Caffeinated kiskadees
exclaim an immanent sunrise.
You need to visit Nayarit–
opaline goblet of barefaced dreams–
more often.
Editor’s note: “Chisme” is Mexican slang for gossip.
Such is the mystical nature of much of Scheibli’s work, utilizing as it does, tropical surroundings, feathery creatures and an innate capacity for dream. In all, twenty-five poems comprise this section with titles that drew me in: “Ode to Iguanas in Nayrit,” “Jaguar Crossing,” “Under the Palapa,” and “Song of the Orange-fronted Parakeet.”
Part II–Ecuador Poems
Without a doubt Silvia Scheibli loves the people of Ecuador. This hospitable land with its “lush corn fields & many-colored roses, / ruby bromeliads & golden bananaquits, / scent of cocoa & coffee plantations” holds a large fragment of her heart. Six poems comprise this section. “Echos on the Road to Babahoyo,” reveals the poet’s heart for the land and its people:
Geese & dozens of jungle chickens
scratch endlessly on hillsides
of banana trees.
Escaped sugar cane & emerald mist
engulf abandoned houses.
Bromeliads perch on telephone wires
like mourning doves.
With partially opened wings
black vultures cast a shadow
over yellow hibiscus.
Delicate roof ferns
volcanic rock & golden bamboo
fade into midnight
with our café
con alma socialista.
Poems by Patty Dickson Pieczka
Beyond These Poems There Be Dragons
Like a child, I’m captivated by dragons. Pieczka “Had Me From Hello,” with her title poem which I share in full:
Drifting on an ocean’s
silk and shells, sea-foam
lacing pearls along the shore,
I follow a dream back
to its home in the dark,
unlace the night
to find forgotten things:
half-vanished thoughts, time
curled within my roots,
words melted by a long-ago sun.
I drift to the ceiling
to watch you sleep.
Your dream breaks
over shoal-bound rocks,
shaking loose a school
of silver fears
and familiar strangers
who sail angel-winged ships,
read the 16 points
of a wind rose to navigate
through the moon’s veil
and ghosts of fog
to the farthest edge
of the subconscious.
I found, within the dreamy cadences of alternating tercets and quatrains, challenges to my conventional ways of thinking. Did I note above that poetry should have an element of practicality? Gently, the poet prods me to probe life “to the farthest edges / of my subconscious.”
Pieczka’s poems are preceded by a quote from Dante Aleghieri: Nature is the art of God. With that as a baseline, the poet skillfully weaves nature and human spirituality into a seamless and coherent whole. Her practical mind gifts readers with down-to-earth titles: “Misplaced” is about her father’s question which indicates that he does not know his own daughter. He asks, Who I am? With a family member suffering from Alzheimer’s, this poem speaks to me where I live.
A distinctive feature of Pieczka’s work is the “linked poem.” These poems utilize the last line in the previous poem as a springboard to the following poem. This formulation, as far as I know, is unique to Pieczka. At least, this reviewer has not encountered it before. There are a total of four linked poems in the collection; each superbly conceived and written.
Pieczka’s final poem, “At Horseshoe Lake,” shows both the mind and heart of a poet at the height of her craft:
I pull sunlight from your hair
to make our shadows pour
into the cypress swamp,
where rivulets spill back
to the time we met.
Tupelo leaves brush the colors
left by secrets barely whispered–
words beyond flight
and dream, strung to
neither root nor bone,
words tumbling in shapes
never recognized before.
We unbutton the hours
until day and night
meet briefly at the horizon;
they kiss, still making
each other blush
after so many years.
Gathering Sunlight, taken as a whole, is poetry that satisfies this reviewer’s mind and his soul. Scheibli and Pieczka have created a triumph of the imagination.
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