For lovely, introspective moments that will whisk you away from the ordinary of the day, here are five poetry books I highly recommend:
Five Poetry Books That Will Whisk You Away!
There is Another — Nineteenth-Century American Poet with "Dramatic Force": Helen Gray Cone
Hidden in Plain Sight, Emerging Into the Light
Five years before Emily Dickinson’s poetry made its appearance in an 1890 Higginson-prefaced volume from a Bostonian publishing house [Roberts], New York publisher Cassell and Company released a book of poetry by twenty-six-year-old Helen Gray Cone [1859-1934] that received critical acclaim [Oberon and Puck, 1885]. In 1886, William Morton Payne of The Dial described the book as “a more ambitious kind . . . unusually full of promise.” [1]
Cone’s debut book of 1885 is a compilation of sixty-six highly lyrical, formal verse poems, many of which respond intertextually to works by authors, visual artists, and composers, such as Shakespeare, Dante, Boccaccio, Bastien-Lepage, and Bach, and often with a metaphysical poetic flair. Human condition themes explore ideology-and-effect, such as in the poems “The Conservative,” “The Liberal,” and “The Inheritance.” Her poems advocate women’s authority over their lives. Her sonnet “The Resolve” is in this collection.
Upon publication by Houghton Mifflin in 1891 of Cone’s second book, The Ride to the Lady and Other Poems, The Critic wrote, “The outlook for the future of poetry in this country grows distinctively brighter…”. [2]
In 1892, Payne [in The Dial] wrote that Cone had accomplished “advance in precision and in dramatic force.” [3] I delineate Cone’s oeuvre into three time periods, the Second Period being her Professional Poet Years of June 1876 to 1891, of which only these two of Cone’s poetry books — her nineteenth-century poetry— reside.
My intent is to bring Helen Gray Cone’s nineteenth-century poetry — and the poet herself — out of the shadows and into the view of Cone as a metrical pre-modernist, intertextual, female-empowerment poet of metaphysical finesse.
Poems that establish Helen Gray Cone’s identity as a poet are found in her nineteenth-century poetry, the striking poems that have been overlooked with virtually no inclusion in twentieth-century century and contemporary anthologies.
These are the poems of her first two books — Oberon and Puck (1885) and The Ride to the Lady and Other Poems (1891).
Celebrate with Wild Conviction!
By Mary Dezember
Author of stories and poetry as portals to possibilities.
Happy 1st Birthday to Wild Conviction!
Read here to find out how to enter birthday celebration contests and attend birthday celebration events!
Wild Conviction was published at the end of July 2023.
It has been an exciting first year for me and for Twilight, Spirit and friends — and a successful year for a debut novel!
I am grateful to all of you who have been and continue to be on this great wild conviction adventure with us!
I hope you can participate in one or more of our First Birthday Celebration Contests and Events!
See below for the Events and Contests with Prizes for which you must be a subscriber to my newsletter to win or attend. If you are not yet, you can Sign Up at the bottom of this page.
What We Do Not See Is Angel Song
What we do not see
Are the vibrations fine-tuned
We call
Kindness,
The quick incanting.
If we listen closely
We might say,
This is angel song —
SHE IS AN OFFICER AND A LEADER
Today, May the Fourth, 2024 — in honor of great SCI-FI, great SCIENCE, and great CREATIVE WRITING — I will post about my role model Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022) and my dear, clever friend Karen Hellinger (1972-2024) — who were relatives — the NMT Sci-Fi Convention in 2008, and my caring, brilliant friend, gentle soul, Dr. Scott Zeman (1969-2020).
“Tell our stories.”
Author of stories and poetry as portals to possibilities.
Readers ask: What motivated me to write my socially conscious, historical, epic adventure novel, Wild Conviction.
My answer is:
Socks of Myself
A Soft and Gentle Reminder
In the Spirit of Walt Whitman
I
Whenever I start to feel tired
and down,
I let my eyes gaze down, too,
for there I can gaze upon my socks . . .
Face-Off: A Poem
A Heliotrope/Heliotropium Poem
By Mary Dezember
Author of stories and poetry as portals to possibilities.
Crushing me to purple, you
are no god.
Your appeal is mythology.
I bloom,
with each floret befriending
the next,
to what, when, and whom
I choose—
Slow Ascension: A Poem for the Coming of Spring
By Mary Dezember
Author of stories and poetry as portals to possibilities.
When tight-lipped winter
cracks a smile,
slants of sunlight
create the ‘scape.
Heaven’s window
shades twist in the wind,
Indulge in Love—Honor & Respect—Accolades
By Mary Dezember
Author of stories and poetry as portals to possibilities.
I am so excited to share that, in addition to numerous insightful 5-Star customer/reader reviews for which I am so grateful, Wild Conviction is receiving accolades in editorial reviews!
The novel received fantastic reviews in recent days by three well-respected publications. These reviews strike me to silence in deep appreciation and awe, as they are awesome.