ALL LOVE,

Border Press Books, Sewanee, TN, announces the publication of All Love, by Diane Marquart Moore, a volume of poems about relatives and relationships, death and dying, illness and recovery, and includes a special section about a three-week sojourn in Mexico. Also featured are prose poems and excerpts from “Everyday Journal IV” about ordinary and extraordinary daily happenings, as well as observations about present-day social issues.

Reviewers celebrate Moore’s new book:

“Mindful of Diane Moore’s ‘other life’ as a Deacon in the Episcopal Church, ‘It is truly right and just’ to celebrate these poems that beat with such a steady pulse our hearts, and by extension, our spirits flourish. Deeply faith-based in her own way but accessible to all of ‘other’ or indeed those of no faiths at all, her words ‘extend to infinity’ (see title poem, which, as all good poems strive to do, means much with fewest means employed), help us negotiate ‘the boundary between twilight and dark,’ and are a sturdy ‘cane’ to rely on as we wend our way through the challenging landscape of this tome.” 

- Stuart Friebert, author of Decanting: Selected and New Poems, founder and director of the Oberlin Creative Writing Program and co-founder of Field Magazine, the Field Translation Series, and the Oberlin College Press.-

“In the epigraph for her poem ‘Music,’ modern mystic Diane Moore cites a line from Rumi. ‘Music’ is a lyric poem celebrating love in the sound of a wren’s singing, the sun’s laughter, and a loved one’s voice. Narrative poems convey Moore’s gift for agape: an Amish woman selling corn and flowers recognizes the poet as ‘a good little lady,’ a child necklace dealer in Mexico, ‘Christ’s vendor,’ displays ‘Jesus on a black string’ with a peephole revealing Christo Rey 'who takes away…all the sins in the world,’ as well as ‘my pesos at the rate of 20 a day’… In ‘A field of Battered Weed,’ Moore reveals the reality of long-lasting love through a thistle, ‘an ancient symbol of both pain and pleasure.’ 

-Kathleen Hamman, editor, Plateau Books, Sewanee, Tennessee.-

Diane Marquart Moore is a retired archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Louisiana, poet, writer, and journalist who lives part of the year in New Iberia, Louisiana, and part of the year in Sewanee, Tennessee. She publishes “A Words Worth” blog at revmoore.blogspot monthly.

The beautiful cover photograph is Karen Bourque’s glass adaptation of a lotus appearing in Why Water Plants Don’t Drown as illustrated by Susan Entsminger and authored by Victoria I. Sullivan. Cover design of All Love, by Martin Romero.

All Love, as well as 49 other titles by Moore, are available through Border Press Books, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN and amazon.com.

ESPRIT DE FEMME

This morning, the fog on The Mountain blanketed trees, homes, and roads with an impenetrable curtain that could have caused feelings of morning gloom at Sewanee, Tennessee. However, when I went into the dining room for breakfast, I looked up at the windows facing our backyard and saw the latest glasswork of Karen Bourque that I brought back with me last week. A piece of purple colored glass with a hawk winging its way in the background cut through the somber world outside, and I decided to unveil this piece before it appears on the cover of my latest book, Above the Prairie, forthcoming through Border Press in June. There's no other word for Karen's new work — it's stunning!

Karen and I've been working together on covers for my books of poetry during the last decade, and have the kind of synchronicity that births an almost instant process: Border Press publisher, Vickie Sullivan, and I meet for lunch with Karen and her husband, Darrell Bourque, former Louisiana poet laureate, and before we fill our plates, I perceive an idea for a book of poetry, along with the title — presto. I tell Karen about the idea, sometimes sending her a photograph or the first poem, and before I can produce a dozen poems, she has begun work on one of her beautiful pieces. In today's slang about synchronicity, she "gets it."

In another life, Karen was a lab technologist, a working mother, and wife, but when she retired, she began to dedicate her talents to glasswork, and her pieces have appeared in churches, spiritual centers, the Ernest Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, at the Louisiana Book Festival, and other cultural institutions and homes throughout Acadiana. She never advertises her work because the word is out about her brilliant talent. As soon as she completes a commission, and even before she completes a glass piece, someone else is at the door to her studio, seeking her artwork.

I know that my book isn't published yet, but this morning when I looked up at the soaring hawk above the Louisiana prairie in prisms of glass, my spirit lifted, and I was compelled to share this stunning glass piece with readers. I'm always as excited about my book covers as I am about the poetry within and hope you'll look for what's coming next...

P.S. At the risk of sounding like a Grandmother braggart: After Karen produces a photo of the glass piece, it is sent to Martin Romero, my grandson in Louisiana, who makes a handsome design around the glass piece for the cover.

A LONELY GRANDMOTHER

By the time I get ready to travel to Sewanee, Tennessee this week-end, I hope that the Louisiana monsoons will have abated and won't follow me, and that all will be dry on The Mountain at my arrival. And by the time I've settled into my Sewanee retreat, A Lonely Grandmother, my latest book of poetry, should have made its debut with Border Press Books. It's No. 40 among my book publications, not counting one lost manuscript of a novel that was put away in an attic and the rats must have consumed (it was my raciest endeavor, so...). The new book of poetry will probably be on the market before my 80th birthday in May.

I told a good friend that A Lonely Grandmother has experienced so many birth problems, Grandmother has probably grown lonelier than ever, waiting for her debut. But she's about to emerge, and straight from the publisher's blurb: "A Lonely Grandmother emphasizes that no matter the period in human history, grandmothers have always been important, cherished women in the family constellation. In this volume of poetry, a maternal grandmother calls the poet's family 'a tempest in a teapot,' but is only showing concern for her grandchildren's dysfunctional upbringing. A stern but forgiving figure in the poet's early life, Grandmother Nell comes to realize that "the children grown/Absolutes will not keep her company."

This is a poetic tribute to a grandparent that spans a family history from the poet's childhood to adulthood and ends with a meditative prose piece that serves as closure: "She closed the heavy door behind me. When I reached the sidewalk, I looked up at the cupola on the roof of the old house. A phantom flew out of the window beneath it and disappeared in the sky."

The beautiful cover of A Lonely Grandmother, which depicts the cupola on my deceased Grandmother Nell's Victorian home in Franklinton, Louisiana, is Vickie Sullivan's photograph of a glass piece conceived and rendered by Karen Bourque, an exquisite glass artist from Churchpoint, Louisiana. Cover design is by grandson Martin Romero, who is a landscape architect practicing in New Orleans, Louisiana. Martin is also an accomplished graphic artist.

A Lonely Grandmother is now available online at amazon.com, or from Border Press, PO Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 for $15 plus $4 shipping and handling.