The Heart of the City and Other Urban Poems by Dina Ripsman Eylon
Dina Ripsman Eylon
Description
Other poets describe the book adequately: “… I have enjoyed reading The Heart of the City. Am greatly impressed with its range – geographical, tonal, imaginative. It’s admirable how you’ve gathered such a wealth of strong material in a relatively compact container.” Allan Briesmaster, Poet, Publisher, and Editor. “Dina Ripsman Eylon’s voice is pure lyricism, individualistic and non-conforming. The speaker’s quest for love is absolute. Yet, tender words can be cunning, misguiding, the embrace loose, and separation finite. The speaker’s seemingly naive stance about the existence of love is often contrasted by a deep sense of alienation, continuing the gloomy traditional theme of urban literatures.” Edith Covensky, Poet, and Professor, Wayne State University.
Book excerpt
These are days
There are days when summer’s heat
scorches a burning heart.
There are days –
Feet aflame, throb, incapable to keep on striding,
limp on sharp edges. Far is the day when they
would climb to the inconceivable summit.
There are days –
The brain wonders how rapidly leaves wilt.
Mad moments dissolve into eternal lunacy.
Sharp pains envelope in generations’ boredom.
There are days –
Hungry for legacy, she wants to rest amid notorious
tombs, put her head down, and forget how the ship
of days sail swiftly with barrels of fumbled memories.
There are days –
Desperate desire for change ceases, as people
dear to her are unable to hold on to each other
in this chamber of pitch-darkness.
Author Bio
Author and publisher, Dina Ripsman Eylon has a Ph.D. in Post-biblical Hebrew Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. For the past sixteen years, she has served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal. She is also the founder of the Vaughan Poets’ Circle. Her chapbook Songs of Love and Misgivings was published in September 2006, and in 2007, she edited a collection of poems entitled Waging Change: Vaughan Poets Engage in Politics. In 2010, Sisterhood Press published Dina’s second chapbook In the Heart of the City. In 2011, Dina published two poetry collections: One in Hebrew, entitled On the Horizon in the First Person (Tel-Aviv: Eked) and the other is entitled, The Heart of the City and Other Urban Poems (Toronto: Sisterhood Press).
Author Website
The Heart of the City and Other Urban Poems