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- "Are her poems modest? No. They are as strong as bamboo, bendable in our
- minds. She has created a book whose spirit this writer can borrow from,
- learn from. The music of her shakuhachi - the wind instrument she
- pitches in private - resounds on each page. When Carol Lem plays that
- ancient flute, we have no choice but to listen, entranced."
- --Gary Soto
- "'How do I make my life interesting and compelling to strangers?' is a
- question that should face every autobiographical poet. Carol Lem has
- managed to find an answer which is made up of her sharp powers of
- observation and her awareness of the poetic traditions that inform her
- poems." --Billy Collins
- Carol Lem teaches creative writing and literature at east Los Angeles
- College. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals. her books
- include, Searchings, Grassroots, Don't Ask Why, The Hermit, The Hermit's
- Journey: Tarot Poems for Meditation,
and Moe, Remembrance. Her
- work is also represented in numerous anthologies including, Grand
- Passion, Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond
, edited by Suzanne Lummis and
- Charles H. Webb.
- Carol Lem has a keen sense of observation, that quiet contemplation
- needed to absorb details with the purpose of winnowing and weeding
- chaff from wheat buds, always with an eye toward the bountiful harvest.
- No area is too private, forbidding, lofty, sacred or profane. She
- writes about family, poets, friends, students, even a dead lover,
- evoking mystery, while gently folding back the origami layers of all
- human emotions and ultimate actions. Carol Lem waves high the oriflamme,
- that golden flame symbol of inspiring devotion and courage. Her
- candlepower light and luminosity of optimism buoys our spirit even as
- her earthy humane wisdom anchors our will-o-the-wisp minds.
--History--
- At times
- it's like cut glass
- this life etched by loss.
- I polish the surface
- to distract myself
- until something bleeds
- inside.
- Then the mirror shatters
- this pose, this mosaic.
--Remember--
- Remember voices of the house who led you
- from room to room, a mother, a father who
- could not open their hearts to you, know
- their stories because they belong
- to the new moon in the year of the horse.
--Shadow of the Plum--
- I would learn silence early
- under the backyard tree
- naming each fallen plum
- for something not said, something
- desired. I would paint landscapes
- with paths leading off to dark shadows
- while listening to them bicker
- over light bulbs and soup brands.
--Hunter After Roots--
- But, Pablo, with your pen
- you ride the waves of your sacred Isla Negra.
- Your wind is alive like a heart.
- You burrow the mute earth
- to discover the vast language
- that makes the stars green.
- In exile, you ask the sun to return you
- to the rain of the ancient woods,
- where you can sing your songs
- of love and despair.
- Marvelous picture images. Endurance. Daily inventions. Dark phrases.
- Artifacts. Falling tiles. Ping pong tables. Mahjong. Chinese soup.
- Chinese ideograms. Crumpled pages. Metaphoric hills, and "the maker of
- this myth/that lets me ride words on waves?"
- Every reader will find ideas to cherish within Carol Lem's words. She
- has followed the windings of her wide-range journey, and we are the
- ones who silently reap the treasures she so casually allows to fall
- from between her fingers, and off the tip of her pen.
- Don't hesitate. This poet has miles to walk, and words that will linger
- far long after she has passed by in the night. Highly recommended!
- Copyright 2003-Joyce Metzger
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