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Author<\/h2>\nLeigh Herrick<\/p>\n
Leigh Herrick is a widely published poet, writer, and recording artist. Her poetry has won numerous awards and she is a two-time Pushcart nominee.<\/p>\n
In HOME FRONT, Leigh Herrick\u2019s first of two collections written during the beginning decade of the New Millennium, we are offered a landscape honed in scope and hauntingly beautiful, as the poet covers a global ground, communicating the immediacy of social and environmental concerns. Matthew Rothschild of THE PROGRESSIVE Magazine writes: “Leigh Herrick’s poems are deeply felt, tightly wrought, and morally compelling. They demand our attention.”<\/p>\n
Largely written after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, and leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Herrick\u2019s work in HOME FRONT serves in the best tradition of engaged poetry, where is found a compendium of images and voices reflecting not just moments of personal hope and love, but those of troubled times in a troubled country, a troubled world, and on a planet in crisis. Herrick offers light footnotes and detailed end-notes for those interested in her references.<\/p>\n
The book opens with a prosaic prologue that lends itself as introduction to the forthcoming pages. It ends with the U.S. military invasion into Iraq. Each poem is dated and the reader feels the reach across land and time as events unfold, but don\u2019t be deceived: This book is not mere politics, or Americana. It is a journey into being as readers witness the poet’s witnessing of the world around her as she calls into question what it means to be alive and humane. An additional bonus is the few drawings included in the book from a collaboration the poet engaged in with visual artist, Branko Gulin.<\/p>\n
Herrick\u2019s gift is her ability to open, to lend opening to her readers, without judgment, to look critically without criticizing. Often drawing on her developed sense of linguistic rhythm, Herrick, who is also a trained hand drummer in Middle Eastern and Afro-Caribbean traditions, creates in HOME FRONT a beautiful blend of the abstract with the traditional.<\/p>\n
FROM THE BACK COVER<\/p>\n
“Leigh Herrick is a master of tonality and truth. Her performative power explodes from the page into full fluency of its voicing. I have seldom read work that so intrinsically honors both tradition and innovation in the art of poetry. This volume is profoundly important.” -Sheila E. Murphy.<\/p>\n
“Leigh Herrick’s poems are smart, direct and uncompromising calls to action, to change what we do to one another and our world…. She is one hell of a writer, not afraid to experiment with you and the language both, and her meticulously crafted prose is often astonishing.” -Tom Cassidy<\/p>\n
“One may not wish to revisit the George W. years, however this collection of work is a wide-ranging statement addressing the anger, sorrow and perplexity of what has affected us all. The variety of poetic forms and hard-hitting topics confront our individual and collective pasts…and enlightens our language of remembrance. It’s time again to realize that poetry can be relevant as is eloquently shown by Ms. Herrick.” -Scott Helmes<\/p>\n
From THE KINDLE BOOK REVIEW TEAM (for the e-book version of HOME FRONT):<\/p>\n
“…I am a tough reviewer. Herrick’s work is unusual; the closest I am aware of is Michael McClure: The New Book \/ A Book of Torture. Both sometimes format all over the place and use capitals at will. Given the enormous time gap between me now and last reading McClure, he must be a memorable author. I’m betting that, in a similar time gap, I’ll be remembering some of Herrick’s work, and I give her an additional nod for having more power in her images.<\/p>\n
Five stars it is. For those who take the time, this work will speak to you. Highly recommended.”<\/p>\n
-Jim Bennett -Kindle Book Review Team<\/p>\n
LETTER FROM THE PRIMROSE PATH
\nToday,
\nI feel like nothing more
\nthan an outrageous contradictory blank page
\nof prose filling nothing
\nwith emptiness.
\nI will eat this for breakfast.
\nI will consider my arguments.
\nVessel of poetry,
\nI offer you pigs, toast, juice,
\ngene-determined children,
\nsunrise, moons, and undetermined mornings,
\nwhile still in this old, tiresome world, soldiers march,
\nmen, women, and children fire weapons or run
\namong the rubble of cities that used to be
\nwhere there are no more beds, no markets,
\nand where all arguments stand with their backs against remaining walls and where
\nall reasons for killing are upheld.
\nMeanwhile, Vessel,
\nyour clever, dactylic sheep climb
\nover these lines like mountains.
\nYour bulbs break from your spring ground
\ntime and again, red and full of vanity,
\ndespite their would-be beauty.
\nYour little pigeons flock and gather up
\nthe bouqueted niceties tied with the inoffensive lace of
\nsilent agreement not to speak or to speak
\nsweet nothings and you think you are dear
\nas a Valentine while I push and push
\nand push again, while I insist you tell me
\nof the other side I won\u2019t forget,
\nthat is the unlit side, side into which you bury
\nyour anger and your pain,
\nside from which is born
\nyour anger and your pain,
\nside that is, when spoken, the chance in hope,
\nthe chance in change.
\nBut today, Vessel, my emptiness,
\nyou have nothing to say.
\nIt\u2019s windy.
\nThe sun is out.
\nThe stores are full of daffodils and prima veras.
\nYou didn\u2019t sleep well last night.
\nBroken dreams pulled at your feet.
\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
SONG OF THE DREAM-DEFERRED LAND
\n-after Langston Hughes
\nWhat\u2019s wrong
\nwith Our Murderous
\nMurdering Sons?
\nAre They
\nAn Accident
\nImprobable
\nas the Bomb
\nor just a minor outcome
\nfrom living a little too numb?
\nWhat\u2019s wrong
\nwith Our Murderous
\nMurdering Sons?
\nShould we try Them
\nas Adults
\njail Them
\nnever set Them free?
\nShould we
\noffer up Their very lives
\nfor the lives They\u2019ll take
\non a killing spree?
\nWe could just shoot Them in the head.
\nWe could electrocute.
\nWe could inject Them \u2018til they\u2019re dead.
\nWhat\u2019s wrong
\nwith Our Murderous
\nMurdering Sons?
\nAre They
\nAn Accident
\nImprobable
\nas the Bomb?
\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
THE QUIET LIFE
\nLately I\u2019ve developed a taste for the quiet life. I think how we could lie and talk together through the night. \u2013Su Tung \u2018po
\nWe could lie together head to head or
\nside by side and on a moonless cloudless
\nsummer\u2019s night watch the sky and we could tell
\nour stories whichever way we\u2019d choose and I
\nwould choose to tell you how one time all alone
\nI lay in a field of corn just to watch
\nthe sudden horizontal float and green shifting
\nof the shimmering borealis strewn in sheets
\nthat flew across the sky and I would only want
\nto leave you with the charge of such energy
\nas it burst \u2013 burst & flared to shift and fade &
\nburst & flare again in the pure silence
\nof a night too cool for crickets or frogs
\nBut of course to know any of this
\nwe would have to be together
\nhead to head
\nor at least in the garden
\nside by side
\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
GEESE
\nThere they go the geese there they go
\nback to warmth before snow falls endlessly
\nfrom where it seems to come along the edges of
\ngloom-broken skies that at the height of morning
\nwould make any mother cry who knows
\nexactly how the sound of joy of sorrow falls
\non the same tremulous note even as they go
\nthose geese even as they are sudden
\na seeming torrent that does not blind or sting
\nas will the silent bursts yet to come\u2014
\nIt\u2019s enough to make her cry
\nto see them so freely so full of grace glide
\nbeyond her window\u2019s awkward space
\nfrom where they go those geese
\nthough a woman thinks of Laos
\nthinks of Ho Chih Minh
\nthough a woman has a hoe
\nand thinks of pauvre Amsterdam of Somalia
\nSierra Leone Afghanistan while leaning far from home into her sink
\nto watch and think of gardening
\nand of a city\u2019s central lot whose plot of soil provides
\nwhere so much else has failed
\nlike a bud in spring
\nfallen from its tree
\nfallen
\nhaving been so long so close to promise
\nto opening
\nto watch
\nand think
\nhow each day passed
\nhow incense burned as prayers flew up
\nfor those now flown away
\nwhile still they go those geese
\nup up up
\nfrom the chilling lake and the quickening slant
\nof the late-day sun\u2014
\nUp over rooftops and trees
\nUp in one great slow show of lift
\nOf riding on all that remains for them
\nbetween each suspending flap
\nthat turns them out
\non air
\n~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n
ENTRY, MONDAY AFTER
\n9\/17\/01
\nGray skies now.
\nI return to poetry
\nlike an obelisk \/ a warning \/ a sentiment
\nhanging over this page like weather
\nall the news of storming burning my lines of sight
\nuntil I blur with the rhetoric of One
\nabout to unfold
\nthe umbrella policy of promise
\nthat something
\nsomething
\nis about to come
\nis gathering itself along the horizon
\nis waiting in the corners of consciousness
\nlike a nightmare
\nunremembered<\/p>\n