Poetry for Christmas (again)

Is it too early to start thinking of Christmas?  Not really if you want to send personalised greeting to family, friends and colleagues - now is the perfect time to begin planning your greetings.  Are poetry and Christmas at odds?  Of course not, especially if you avoid the syrupy cutesy cards you pay huge $ for and choose a beautiful book full of real, award winning poetry. Instead of a card that will end up as landfill, you'll give a gift and card in one that people will keep.  My co-author Carolyn Howard-Johnson and I have pulled together just such a book, and you can order them, with their beautiful full-color cover by prize wining water-colourist Vicki Thomas, for only $3 each.  That's less than the cost of a card (only $75 for 25 of the most memorable holiday greetings you've ever sent to your family, friends, and colleagues), and will make a significantly more powerful impression, especially if you write a personal note inside.  The book was a USA Book News finliast and a Military Writers Society of America Silver Award Winner.  To order, just send an email to HoJoNews@aol.com with HOLIDAY ORDER in the subject line, and Carolyn will make direct payment arrangements with you. Or you can drop by Amazon (click on book cover above) and buy the books individually for $6.95.  Here's a sample:

Silent Symphony

Though it’s calm in the dark room

where you sit on Christmas eve

reaching for familiarity

I’ll take you down

to that imperfect place

of tone and sound

beyond culture’s skin, language

hard wired clickity clack

auditory parasite

multiples of frequencies

simple-ratio harmonies or complex

carols of memory

down there

in the consonance of memory

walking the cobblestones of imagination

your black heart finds light

melodic intervals

of sensation more pervasive than chance

open your ears into the silence

 a symphony

vibrating  the universe of your illusory body.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com