Cloud Birds
Cloud Birds is a breathtaking flight through the western shoreline of Lake Superior north to the Iron Range of Minnesota. The poems are about bears, immigrants, bird migration, and women moving through violence.
Chosen
I came home
to hear the great grey owl
call into the early dark
beyond the clearing
over the growl and screech
of an animal sheltered
by fallen tree
burrowed out of reach
of talons and beak
below the black tangle
and pine spears
above crystalline snow
and moonlit drift
a merciless hide and seek
followed by inscrutable silence
near and far the lift
of dark wings
into the old ash and gleam of star
or flame with no in- or exhalation
where wind hauls its ice
and diamonds sift
into the blue night.
"The meditations and assembled memories in Cloud Birds dissolve layer after layer of the defenses we erect against eternal human fears and longings. Images from the North, from the Iron Range--bears and birches, roads that had 'no end, only yearning,' set the poems in place and motion. Often the poems do not end in a period: instead they leave us following their trail, "a thoroughfare of light falling through the pines." --Connie Wanek, author of On Speaking Terms (Copper Canyon Press, 2010)
"Cloud Birds is about bears, wings, migrations--and apples, anger, rivers, roots, coffee, fields, longing and always, always love. The collection is wonderfully liminal. It is richly shaded and shadowed, a translucent layering of meaning and memory, of dream and thistle. It moves between narrative and music, between aura and the most grounded reality. Many of the poems linger as sound as much as image. Some are ephemeral. Some are achingly immediate. The poems invite the reader to become part of the process. Trust the free fall of Sheila Packa's voice and imagination. This is the mystery and power of her work." --Pamela Mittlefehldt, PhD, co-editor of Beloved of the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press, 2009)
Midwest Book Review writes: The changing of seasons, the changing of life seems to move so much faster in the north. Cloud Birds is a collection of poetry from Shelia Packa, a Finnish American woman who calls Minnesota home, viewing the changing of nature and life as she sees it and always moving. Cloud Birds is an excellent compilation of poetry driven by both humanity and the beauty and uncertainty of nature. Cloud Birds: "we live on both sides of the border/in two countries/in and outside each other/bone and blood/in disguise without intention or force/without blandishments/blown by wind/silent like shadow crossing and crossing/over the boundaries without end/borne by moon or sun/burnished by wing."
Garrison Keillor read the poem "Not Forgotten," from Cloud Birds, on Writer's Almanac:
Featured here: writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/05/18
Available in bookstores.
ISBN: 9780984377725
Distributor: Ingram
$15
For more information about the book, see
Sheila's blog
To purchase Cloud Birds online see:
amazon.com
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cover painting by cecilia ramon
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Echo & Lightning
Wildwood River announces the publication of Echo & Lightning (expanded version), a book of poems, by Sheila Packa. It's a love story as well as a story about migration and change. Sheila has had her work featured by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac and anthologized in To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets (New Rivers Press) and Beloved of the Earth (Holy Cow Press).
Kirsten Dierking (author of One Red Eye and Northern Oracle) writes: "So many poems in Echo & Lightning reveal what has to be given away in order to be filled with something greater--a more intense spiritual awareness, a fuller connection with the landscape, a more generous and all-encompassing love. Echo & Lighting transforms us into something freer, wilder, more given to loving, while reminding us that to fly is to risk leaving the old behind ... "
Ellie Schoenfeld, author of The Dark Honey, writes: "These poems are the story of following one's own instincts to, in one way or another, migrate. They bring us to the exact moment when we surrender to our truest selves, when we allow ourselves to be transported, transformed, resurrected."
The Northeast Minnesota Book Award reading team, May 2011 writes: "Lyrical, intimate, all while challenging your personal status quo or inertia. These poems by Sheila Packa evoke all the senses to come to attention - so you don't miss a single, heightened note. Written to be read to the voice of the cello, the experience of reading them to yourself is like swimming in very deep water (at night!)- exciting while pushing you beyond your present limits to LIVE more fully than you ever thought you might!"
Echo & Lightning won the 2011 Goldie Award for Poetry from the Golden Crown Literary Society.
Available in bookstores.
ISBN: 9780984377718
Distributor: Ingram
$15
Learn more about Sheila Packa at www.sheilapacka.com
To purchase Echo & Lightning online see:
amazon.com
contact us
info@wildwoodriver.com
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cover painting by cecilia ramon
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