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Karla Linn Merrifield & Friends
Published by mgv2 publishing, 2013
Marie’s Legacy
ash pebble of breastbone
lake-buried remains of my mother
sweeps streaming seaways
from fresh Ontario to brined
Galapagos Archipelago currents
washes ashore bright
among black lava sands
it has pursued me
to breathe
in pulse of sea lion pups suckling
in green turtle eggs eggs
of marine iguana crackling
open with crawls of hatchlings
in chick-chocked nests
of flightless cormorants magnificent
frigate birds blue-footed boobies
in tidal pools bubbling
with spawn of Sally Lightfoot crabs
of rock snails
in red mangrove tree seeds
in saltbush seeds and
in some endemic infant
conceived in me again
when I harvest mother’s
last pearl of being
on this profligate beach
on the equator of wildness
DESCRIPTION
A great poetry collection can do two seemingly different things at once—give us insight into a wide and sometimes rambunctious world through imagery that transports while also providing a voyage into the smallest details, those things that many of us routinely overlook. Karla Linn Merrifield & Friends accomplishes both tasks—and does them superbly.
The writers include Karla Linn Merrifield, Colleen Powderly, Chris Crittenden, M.J. Iuppa, Michael G. Smith, and Eve Anthony Hanninen.
It might seem unlikely that the book would have cohesion with six such varied writers, but that variety creates the energy. The six poets ping off each other, sometimes share similar subjects, but each poet is still able to create an individual voice and style.
Many of the poems either focus on place or place is strongly suggested in each of the poets’ groups of poems. We can go from the Nile to the beach at Hamlin to a “city with no arms” to the Bristol hills to a river of holes and glass and to Oregon. The poets are our guides, and it is a delight to linger at the places they show us, not merely to see them, but, once we enter deeply into the poems, to become a part of those places. We also enter the places inside ourselves that sometimes seem distant or perhaps frightening.
The natural world is a common thread in these works. The poets peel away the shadows so that we can see more clearly the mystery and surprises in our still vital world. Eve Hanninen asks, “Did I just witness a star die/ a billion billionth of a chance?” Michael G. Smith shows us “a hummingbird that wove/ her nursery from/ amber twine.” M.J. Iuppa takes us where “The mud smelled dangerous.” Chris Crittenden introduces us to a monk who is “wind without a crag to howl off.” Colleen Powderly suggests that beauty is “in a smooth granite slab/ added to a wall.” Karla Linn Merrifield has us look where “lonely humans swim island bays to meet the ray of dreams.”
This collection has a quiet power, a wisdom born of contemplation and acute observation. This is not light reading. To fully enjoy the work, I found it helpful to reread the poems, including doing so out loud. Readers will find poems that speak quite particularly to their own experiences and feelings. These poems are like bits of colored glass in the light. Depending on the angle from which we look, we find different prisms, evocative shades and textures.
Karla Linn Merrifield & Friends is now one of those books that I keep close at hand, not stuffed on a shelf. I like to return to it, sometimes pick one of the poets and think about what that writer is focusing on. Other times, I like to pick random poems from each poet, see how new patterns take shape. This is a living collection, a joy and a deep pleasure.
— By Kenneth Pobo, contributor, from his Foreword
Get Yours:
This book is out of print, but you may request an MS Word document of the text from the author.
Get your copy:
A limited number of signed copies are available from the author.
Dawn of Migration and Other Audubon Dreams
Published by Rochester Ink Poetry In Fusion, 2007
Mercy Flight
Migrants crack open
not sleep but my waking pleas
for relief, my flooded longing.
Their echelons inundate
this morning’s golden firmament
of fire, of light.
Yes, flocks of those heavenly dragons
speak loudly, listen calmly
as they travel south from the tundra
to winter’s ease,
to others’ easing.
They shall fill the bayou skies,
replace all ranks of rain,
flying on fair nameless winds.
What people remain will lift up
their eyes to the guiltless blue,
the most innocent clouds:
Aid has arrived
on the wings of geese;
a joyful noise
is heard throughout
the land when
compassion out of Canada
comes trumpeting.
They will take refuge
on a slow eddy with fellow refugees;
both shall feed again on abundant rice.
DESCRIPTION
Not just for bird nerds, this slender volume of poems and photographs bring somber Canada geese and double-crested cormorants as well as flaming Galapagos flamingos and Florida roseate spoonbills, among many bird species, home to roast in the reader’s imagination. Here are winged creatures who “bring the water-borne swirl/ and eddy of noonlight// and sustenance of time/to place the heart upon” in safe refuge.
The book was endorsed by the Genesee Valley Audubon Society and bears their emblem: “The Dawn of Migration photography-poetry project is supported by the Genesee Valley Audubon Society.” In addition to the cover full-color photograph, the seventeen poems are accompanied by seventeen black-and-white photos by the author.
GALLERY
“You cannot hold blue long enough,” writes Karla Linn Merrifield in Dawn of Migration and indeed the poets reins are so slightly grasped that her words soar upward like birds in flight. Her collection celebrates the grandeur of nature and, for the most part, tacitly assumes that the reader will be her partner in the cheerful celebrations, as she invites us to “let this day begin with an ordination of feathers into imagination.” Only in “Getting Away with Murder in the Enchantadas,” does she allow her outrage at man’s cruelty to surface as she graphically describes imaginary poacher-pirates in the Galapagos who kill boobies for their feet. This poem is made more horrific as Merrifield contrasts this indictment with a sensual, comic paean to blue-footed boobies. In style, these poems are intensely feminine; in perspective, they are powered by the maternal, as if written by Mother Nature herself.
– Laury A. Egan, fine art photographer, poet, and novelist
Karla Linn Merrifield’s photographs are as poignant and personal as her poetry. Her birds emit a real sense of rhythm in flight, the dance on water, and their vulnerability on shore. Through her photos and poetry, my heart opens wide to the spiritual nature of birds, these fragile creatures that link heaven to earth.
– Kate Thompson, contributing photographer, Arizona Highways Magazine
Get Your Copy:
A limited number of signed copies are available from the author.
Get your copy:
A limited number of signed copies are available from the author.
Time, & Time Again
Published by SUNY Brockport Press, 1996
Father
Daddy, I am the red tear,
one of at least a thousand & one
hot, angry rubies
rained down in a child’s garden of fears
or, as I was, deposited
under the bed alongside dust bunnies
where she crawled to hide
on nights when the welts rose
& darkened. I was dropped
& bounced on the hardwood floors,
glistening, still listening
to the throb.
DESCRIPTION
In Time, & Time Again, Karla Linn Merrifield explores the human construct of Time in her opening thirty-page extensively researched essay to the collection of poems, examining closely, for example, the notion of writer and journalist Jamake Highwater’s “Primal Time” as illuminated in his book The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian America. The reader emerges from these scholarly lines of prose to be elevated by the poetic lines in the ensuing collection of poems that amplify how Time acts on and in the human heart whether through marriage and divorce, or through childhood betrayal and a triumph of spirit in adulthood.
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A limited number of signed copies are available from the author.
This book is out of print.
The Sweet Heart of Nature
Published by SUNY Brockport Press, 1996
DESCRIPTION
The heady aroma of Nature in spring….the musky scent of new love…and a mild whiff of a mother’s wisdom combine in an enchanting bouquet that is Karla Linn Merrifield’s first collection of poetry.