Untamed Arabesque: Poems
by Marianne Peel
48 Poems ~ 11 Color Illustrations ~ 89 pages
Price: $20.00 + $4.00 shipping
Publisher: Laverne Zabielski and Act of Power Press
ISBN #: 979-8-31-986193-1
To Order: https://lavernezabielski.com/actofpowerpress
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The term arabesque carries within it a range of meanings. This one best exemplifies Marianne Peel’s remarkable new project: “An ornament or style that employs flower, foliage, or fruit and sometimes animal and figural outlines to produce an intricate pattern of interlaced lines.” Peel’s poetry lives within this broad construct. Untamed Arabesque is sensual, surprising, and exultant in the spirit of Walt Whitman whose “body electric” extended the reach of poetry in 19th century America. With every turn of the page Marianne Peel gives her readers fresh perspectives on life.
Source: Webster’s Online Dictionary
ADVANCE PRAISE:
If Whitman sang the body electric, Marianne Peel choreographs its current. In Untamed Arabesque, the body is not merely celebrated–it is opened, unwrapped, revealed in all its ache and exultation. Skin becomes sensate narrative: it reaches recoils, remembers, and ultimately rejoices in connection. Peel’s poems are charged with intimacy, illuminating the many forms of embodiment–lovers hungry for touch, the dying poised for return, the tender topography of women’s bodies, the flirtational grace of strangers across restaurant tables. This is a collection lush with physicality and meaning-making, where contact becomes communion. Each poem pulses with the reminder: we are deeply, undeniably alive–and we are more so by each other.
–Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr., poet, author of Gay Poems for Red States
From smoky dance floors in juke joints and honky-tonks to prom night and P.F. Chang’s, Marianne Peel can find or create sensual magic across space, location, and time. Her work teems with red feather boas and musical rivers of desire. Yet it is not only the romantic erotic that powers these poems; Peel explores the fragrant lust of meadow and flower as well; the physical pleasure of connection between life-long friends; the skin-and-heart attachment of mother and child. The myriad aspects of love and loss and seduction are woven through these poems, line after line.
–Laura Apol, author Cauterized, former Poet Laureate of Lansing, Michigan
Of all the brilliant poets I read, study with, esteem, Marianne is at the top of my admiration list for the magical way she weaves imagery into her poems. She ignites her readers to lose a sense of ordinary time, and travel with her deep into her narratives. With her new collection of poetry, Marianne’s gift of guiding the reader viscerally into each of her poems continues to astound. Untamed Arabesque at its very core is deeply sensuous. Balinese women making offerings, washer women making music, dancing in the rain, daughters coming of age, the wonder of place. If you dare to read Untamed Arabesque, you will find yourself as if in a juke joint dancing, sweating, celebrating a new or renewed sexual awakening. You, too, will understand desire as a sacred aspect of the Goddess Herself.
–Wilderness Sarchild, poet and playwright, author of Old Women Talking
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Marianne Peel is a writer, educator, singer, dancer, composer, and flautist. A citizen of the world, she steps out of her comfort zone and into far-flung places tourists rarely visit: working at the Blind School in Nepal, teacher educators in Guizhou Province of China, exploring archeological dig sites in Turkey, volunteering at Kara Tepe Refugee Camp in Lesvos, Greece. Marianne was awarded two Fulbright-Hays Fellowships–one to Nepal and one to Turkey. As an English teacher for thirty-two years, who nurtured the creativity of her students, she now celebrates her own creative spirit, paying attention and writing from the sometimes chaotic, sometimes tranquil, hot mess that is her wheelhouse. She is the mother of four daughters scattered across the Midwest. Currently she lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her partner Scott. Marianne can frequently be found at open mics, sharing her voice, as well as honoring the voices of her fellow poets. She is an award-winning poet: nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of the Net, and winning poetry contests in Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, and Florida. Marianne placed first in Kentucky’s Chaffin/Kash Poetry Award (2021) and placed second in Kentucky’s Grand Prix Poetr Award (2023(. Her work can be found in Comstock Review, Ekphrastic Review, Muddy River Review, among many others. She has two full-length poetry publications: No Distance Between Us (2022) and Singing is Praying Twice (2024), both from Shandelandhouse Modern Press. Marianne Peel can be reached at mariannechina2008@yahoo.com
FROM THE BOOK:
Take Me to Sea with You
by Marianne Peel
I will tote a picnic basket
in the crook of my arm,
heavy with goat cheese and pomegranate seeds,
gooseberry jam,
biscuits in a hibiscus tin,
a flask of quince mead,
a raisin scone radiant with crystalized sugar.
And we will cloister ourselves on the waves.
An afternoon of muted voices,
words loitering at the hollow of our throats.
We will feed one another
slabs of biscuits slathered in preserves
and we will lick each other’s fingers
until we are sea-weary,
until we are sun-dizzy.
Clutching the sides of our canoe,
careen from rock to rock,
sandbar to sandbar.
I will salt your cheeks
with puddles of sea water,
hand over hand on your face,
electric with brine.
You will weave seagrass into my hair,
braid upon braid,
vibrating with multitudes
of saltwater meadows.
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