Tupelo Press - Bright Turquoise Umbrella by Hermine Meinhard

Bright Turquoise Umbrella by Hermine Meinhard synopsis \| selected poems \| reviews
	$16.95 pb ISBN: 1-932195-10-6 Order Now! Go to Checkout

What better way to follow a child into womanhood than through the shifting, magical landscape of portents and signs? In *Bright Turquoise Umbrella*, Hermine Meinhard shakes up the physical world, leaving us mesmerized. Leaving us changed. She possesses the secret of dreams, and like a Sherpa for the soul, helps us climb to a place that is lyrical and enchanting, lighter than air, even when revealing something utterly shocking. Fish make prophecies, beheaded women sing, and time turns boundless. This is poetry that rewires our experiences — what we most treasure and what we most fear — in a way that reaches us organically, that sets us buzzing. In these utterly intriguing poems, vivid, disquieting, even violent images collude with a gentle lyrical voice to produce an unusually affecting poetry. These poems transfix us as Hermine Meinhard takes our hand — for she is nothing if not gentle — and leads us deep into the unconscious — hers, and ours. "Meinhard's receptive devotion to dreams and folktales of earth, sky, animals and insects, places her among the most gifted portraitists of our time. In four distinct chapters, Oscar Wilde's 'life is too important to be taken seriously,' whispers through a lullaby that falls, singing reversals and contradictions, 'from the Tree of Heaven.'" — Andrew Levy "In Hermine Meinhard's poems, everything is, as the French poet Robert Desnos once said, 'as if in a child's picture.' Naive and wise at the same time, and also terrible and disturbing. They are delicate necklaces of gestures, imaginative spaces where bodies and fables get grafted onto and grow into each other. I love the gentle waywardness of Meinhard's storytelling, her habitual methodology 'agitating and seeking' to find the self. This is remarkable work that startles as much as it soothes." — Elaine Equi "In these lucid dreams of revelation, Hermine Meinhard takes as her starting point the most mysterious territory of the soul. Amazed and hurt, joking in fear, loving and experienced, all at once, she is one of those few artists (Kafka and Fra Angelico come to mind) whose simplicity and skill deliver the refreshment of a deeper tenderness toward being." — Brooks Haxton		People who bought Bright Turquoise Umbrella also bought: American Linden You Can Tell the Horse Anything Storm Damage
Selected Poems
	On the Porch Grandfather was in heaven feeding the ducks and I was in your lap with peaches. I can't say exactly when this happened. Grandfather was in heaven and you were somewhere and I was eating strawberries. Later I ate something in a room with enormous ceilings. The sun was shining. This was after I was sitting in your lap and eating pears and talking about something. I was small and old. Or else I was not that old and Grandfather was asleep on the porch. You'd gone away or I'd left you. I was either in heaven or alone. I was eating apples. Grandfather was feeding the ducks. Bright Turquoise Umbrella I asked the octopus a personal question about his arms. I bent back my thumb, separated my fingers like scissors. He quietly moved away. The sea was filled with red weed which wrapped itself around my legs. When I emerged, nothing was familiar: my knee, with the brown mark like a chicken eye -- my toes, little boxes, the pinky straying like a wild hair. On the beach was a red blanket, a beach ball, a bright turquoise umbrella, and a man. He was making lunch, slicing fish onto bread, cutting up a peach. There was orange juice and milk on the blanket, and music from a radio -- and the man's feet, which stuck out over the edge of the blanket, moved to the music. He looked up and gave a little wave. My hair was still wet.
Reviews
	Pleiades Review of Books featured a fine review of *Bright Turquoise Umbrella. The summer 2004 issue of Rain Taxi* magazine has reviewed *Bright Turquoise Umbrella: http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2004summer/print.shtml. The text can be found here: http://www.herminemeinhard.net/books.html. Bright Turquoise Umbrella* was reviewed by Laura Sims in Jacket Magazine: http://jacketmagazine.com/25/sims-mein.html.