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Column of Silence

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With her second collection, Poet Joyce Nower - squarely in the middle of it, contemplates life, death, the past, present and future. Her poems span the globe from the colossal ruins of ancient Greece, to Mexico, England, France and to childhood memories in "Peconic Bay, Long Isand", (pg 1) and "Pure Pleasure," (pg 3). She confronts in a moving poem, "The Angel of Death," (pg 4) her mother's death on a bathroom floor, understatedly listing personal effects - what a life has come to. "...You sensed her coming. On the Baby Grand/ signs of last minute life were ordered:/ a marriage certificate, bonds in the open/ strong box, a list of scattered possessions,/ photos of Dad ..." In the poem "Column of Silence," (pg. 24) Ms. Nower rebells against ideas, shaping history by thought and opts instead to feel. She so totally blends into it: "No more 'is this where...?' 'In what year...?'/ Only sit in the cafe, alone, like the column/ of silence carved in the plaza by a hand that no longer matters/ and hear in the shade uncontrollable voices ..." Later in the same poem, she imagines the chiseled god before her: "...flow over the arms of the young bride, along tucks/ at the breasts and the fluted hem of her chiton/ as she takes from her jewelry case a bracelet,/ almost to clasp it around her wrist, almost to rise - ..." In the poem "Ephesus," which won for Ms. Nower 3rd place in Taproot Literary Review's 10th Edition, she blends herself into the future. "I would prefer to be a statue/ dug up a thousand years from now./ I would look better, instead of a/ scatter of tibia and femur..." "Oh, to embarrass a government/ a thousand years from now -/ languidly sprawled down an embankment/ my ruins lolling into white-blue bays/ stroked by Mediterranean waves." The collection offers quite a trip, not to be missed.