SELECTED POEMS
By Joan Colby
An
observer of all types of human behavior, a social critic and a passionate
appraiser of our ability to soar or to drown in a downward spiral, Joan Colby's
poems are both loud and haunting, both vivid and quiet as a falling stone. Like
the resonance of an ancient gong or the silence of everyone's mysterious inner
journey, Colby reflects to us who we are: agile mentalists or farmers toiling
the earth under a hot sun; younger or finally wrinkled with wisdom; men, women,
spirits, and horses all racing towards divergent destinations while Fate looks
down at us and smiles wryly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Christina
Zawadiwsky
"More
than almost any poet I know, Joan Colby follows John Keats's advice to "load
every cranny with ore." Whether she's mining salt or emeralds, the reader will
be the richer for it!"
Dan
Veach
www.danveach.com
Editor,
Atlanta Review
danveach@hotmail.com
Joan
Colby is one of night’s dark agents cataloging misery, atrocity, and death.
Collected here is a large body of evidence that Wisconsin Death Trip is
closer to reality than Midwesterners let on. Colby is an indie vet and these
selected poems evolve chronologically from imagistic bursts to longer
narratives. But don’t be deceived by the random beauty amid the mortality. No
sugar coating here. These poems are “brimming with emeralds and bones.” Colby
is heir to Penelope, muse of shiver, crafting darkness and light into a
haunting tapestry of wisdom and truth. –Richard Peabody, editor Gargoyle
Magazine
Joan Colby’s Selected Poems brings to mind Walter Pater’s
imperative to “burn always” with a “hard, gemlike flame.” Emotional
intensity and large sympathies characterize this collection, which is
underwritten by an intelligence itself as fiery as it is sharp. When Colby
writes of “Byzantine / Geometrics suggesting a rage of contained / Passion,” she
in effect offers an insight into her work, for its passion is
contained--and simultaneously heightened--by her keen sense of artistry; she writes
that “Existence is terrible,” but these poems, despite that existence--or
arguably because of it--incorporate a luxuriance, a kind of flirtation with
wildness, that enriches them while never engulfing her craft. In a poem for
Sylvia Plath, whose own passionate intelligence could be a template for Colby’s,
she speaks of “loss and a furious resolve,” and such a balanced opposition
defines the Colby dynamic. As a poet of landscape and the people and
creatures who inhabit it--the D. H. Lawrence of Birds, Beasts and Flowers would
particularly admire here besides love poems of a Solomonic fervor the strong
feeling she brings to close observation--Colby advises, “Pay attention now.
Look for one / Green thing to remember,” and she takes her own advice,
remembering through her verse “everything holy or bleak.” Readers who
respond to her invitation to “Come in. / Sit / here in my kitchen. / Let
me / fatten you,” will happily fatten with language that sings and the
experience of a complete world, recognizably our own but here clarified and
reclaimed through the transformative lens of her powerful
imagination.
By
Philip Dacey
By Joan Colby
An
observer of all types of human behavior, a social critic and a passionate
appraiser of our ability to soar or to drown in a downward spiral, Joan Colby's
poems are both loud and haunting, both vivid and quiet as a falling stone. Like
the resonance of an ancient gong or the silence of everyone's mysterious inner
journey, Colby reflects to us who we are: agile mentalists or farmers toiling
the earth under a hot sun; younger or finally wrinkled with wisdom; men, women,
spirits, and horses all racing towards divergent destinations while Fate looks
down at us and smiles wryly.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Christina
Zawadiwsky
"More
than almost any poet I know, Joan Colby follows John Keats's advice to "load
every cranny with ore." Whether she's mining salt or emeralds, the reader will
be the richer for it!"
Dan
Veach
www.danveach.com
Editor,
Atlanta Review
danveach@hotmail.com
Joan
Colby is one of night’s dark agents cataloging misery, atrocity, and death.
Collected here is a large body of evidence that Wisconsin Death Trip is
closer to reality than Midwesterners let on. Colby is an indie vet and these
selected poems evolve chronologically from imagistic bursts to longer
narratives. But don’t be deceived by the random beauty amid the mortality. No
sugar coating here. These poems are “brimming with emeralds and bones.” Colby
is heir to Penelope, muse of shiver, crafting darkness and light into a
haunting tapestry of wisdom and truth. –Richard Peabody, editor Gargoyle
Magazine
Joan Colby’s Selected Poems brings to mind Walter Pater’s
imperative to “burn always” with a “hard, gemlike flame.” Emotional
intensity and large sympathies characterize this collection, which is
underwritten by an intelligence itself as fiery as it is sharp. When Colby
writes of “Byzantine / Geometrics suggesting a rage of contained / Passion,” she
in effect offers an insight into her work, for its passion is
contained--and simultaneously heightened--by her keen sense of artistry; she writes
that “Existence is terrible,” but these poems, despite that existence--or
arguably because of it--incorporate a luxuriance, a kind of flirtation with
wildness, that enriches them while never engulfing her craft. In a poem for
Sylvia Plath, whose own passionate intelligence could be a template for Colby’s,
she speaks of “loss and a furious resolve,” and such a balanced opposition
defines the Colby dynamic. As a poet of landscape and the people and
creatures who inhabit it--the D. H. Lawrence of Birds, Beasts and Flowers would
particularly admire here besides love poems of a Solomonic fervor the strong
feeling she brings to close observation--Colby advises, “Pay attention now.
Look for one / Green thing to remember,” and she takes her own advice,
remembering through her verse “everything holy or bleak.” Readers who
respond to her invitation to “Come in. / Sit / here in my kitchen. / Let
me / fatten you,” will happily fatten with language that sings and the
experience of a complete world, recognizably our own but here clarified and
reclaimed through the transformative lens of her powerful
imagination.
By
Philip Dacey
