Shimmer: An Ekphrastic Poetry Collection
by Paulette Demers Turco
24 Poems ~ 25 art images (14 acrylic paintings on canvas,
3 drawings on Bristol paper, 8 color photos) ~ 81 pages
Price: $20.00 SC ~ $28.00 HC
Publisher: Kelsay Books
ISBN SC: 978-1-63980-317-0
ISBN HC: 978-1-63980-333-0
To Order: www.Kelsaybooks.com


ABOUT THE BOOK:


Poets who are also visual artists have always experimented with ways to combine the two creative modes. Paulette Demers Turco does so here in Shimmer, a collection of ekphrastic poetry based on her own artworks. The pairing recalls William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, poems he illustrated with his own engravings. The art here, like Blake’s, is Turco’s own, but the poems engage the whole tradition of ekphrastic poetry, in which poets meditate on works created by others, as in John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” … Shimmer invites the reader to pause and appreciate the often simple yet unfathomable wonders of the natural world. It is a book to be savored and returned to again and again.
–From the introduction by Alexander Pepple, Editor-in-Chief of Able Muse and its associated presses.


ADVANCE PRAISE:


This collection, highlighted with the author’s own pictures (acrylic, pencil, and photographs), lives up to its title. It’s steeped in shimmering light and local color. “The harbor holds the rim of day,” she writes. Moonlight shines on the “sea’s veneer”; Turco watches “the mango-tinted moon’s ascent” and sees the oaks as “silhouettes in filigree.” She observes the natural world in words that speak directly to our eyes, reflecting her vision onto the page in lines both poetic and graphic.

One of Shimmer’s delights is the simple, straightforward language that matches its New England seascapes and countryside. In my favorite lines in the book, we hear the metrical music of Turco’s Anglo-Saxon diction: “Weighed branches bend, some break / from clustered clumps the Mariposas make.”
–Deborah Warren, Connoisseur of Worms (Paul Dry Books, 2021)

When Shimmer’s author Paulette Demers Turco says in the book’s opening poem, an evocation of a beach at sunset, that "My child's towel becomes a gown," the simplicity-cum-imagination of the stroke instantly convinces that one is in the hands of a true poet. The book, inspired by and replete with Turco’s quite beautiful paintings, drawings, and photos, is set in the seaside town of Newburyport, Mass (with occasional visits to other parts of New England and beyond). Nature, architecture, family, love and loss–Shimmer, though modestly scaled, has room for all of these elements. The paintings are poetic, the poems painterly: both, well, shimmer with color and light. If any book deserves to be called a gem, this one does.
–Daniel Brown, Subjects in Poetry (St. Louis Press, 2018)

This fine collection of Paulette Demers Turco’s beautifully reproduced paintings, photos, and drawings, paired with her superb poems, is a multi-dimensional treat. The vibrant depictions of New England’s river lands and the Atlantic coast, centering in northeastern Massachusetts, visually transport us to such colorful locations as the Kancamagus Highway, Quechee Gorge, Ottauquechee River, Plum Island, Marblehead harbor, and farther afield to Charlevoix, and Peggy’s Cove. The lyric poems that accompany the art add the extra dimensions of feeling, metaphor, musicality, and personal connection that only superior verse can bestow. The talent on display in Shimmer is breathtaking and rare. Kelsay Books deserves our special thanks for bringing out this gorgeous little volume.
–Leslie Monsour, The Colosseum Critical Introduction to Rhina P. Espaillat (Colosseum Books, 2021)


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Paulette Demers Turco began writing poetry when she learned she was about to become a grandmother. She feels so fortunate to have moved to Newburyport, MA, where she took her first poetry class in 2014, taught by Rhina P. Espaillat, who became an ongoing inspiring poetry mentor, soon followed by Alfred Nicol, welcoming her into a vibrant poetry community.

Most recently, she served as editor of The Powow River Poets Anthology II (Able Muse Press, 2021). Her first chapbook, In Silence, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2018. Her poetry has appeared in The Lyric, Ibbetson Street, The Poetry Porch, Loch Raven Review, Mezzo Cammin, 2020 Hippocrates Prize Anthology, and others; her poetry and artwork, in Quill & Parchment, Merrimac Mic Anthologies III–V, and Word Play. A Powow River Poet since 2018, she is a co-organizer and host of the group’s monthly reading series. Awards include the 2020 Robert Frost Poetry Award; the MFA in Writing President’s Award at Lesley University, Cambridge, MA; commendation in the 2020 FPM-Hippocrates Health Pro-fessional Prize for Poetry and Medicine; first place ekphrastic poetry prize for the 2019 Rockport, MA, Poetry Festival.

Since taking classes in drawing and painting with acrylics on canvas at the Newburyport Art Association, her art has been exhibited there, Newburyport’s Paula Estey Gallery, Amesbury City Hall, and selected as cover images for her chapbook and two poetry anthologies. She has served as a featured artist, and images of her paintings, as ekphrastic prompts in Quill & Parchment.

Retired from academic and clinical optometry, she enjoys and is inspired by family, friends, artists and poets, life and the natural surroundings in and around Newburyport, where she lives.


FROM THE BOOK:



Orange Sky on Charlevoix
acrylic on canvas

Orange Sky on Charlevoix
by Paulette Demers Turco

She never could imagine this Great Lake,
illuminated by the setting sun,
bright as a centenarian’s birthday cake–
candles all aflame. This day’s not done.
This lighthouse, water surface, cloud-filled sky,
capture this slant of light for moments here–
before the lighthouse beam will blink its eye,
as if afloat, for mariners to veer
their ships around threats hidden by the night.
For now, the miracle of waves of light
meanders through the surfaces she’ll view
without him—pleased to be among the few
to capture this collage of orange red.
It will not last, nor change what lies ahead.


 


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