Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity [Paperback]

Magdalena Ball (Author), Carolyn Howard-Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 2011

Part of the award winning Celebration Series, Deeper into the Pond celebrates, supports, and inspires women. "Vivid images...will speak to you of times to look forward to or to remember. These are not poems to read once. They will stay with you forever."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This Is the Place, won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, won three. An instructor for UCLA Extension's world-renown Writers' Program, her book The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't was named USA Book News' "Best Professional Book 2004," and was given the Irwin Award. Her second book in the How To Do It Frugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success is also an award winner. Her chapbook of poetry Tracings was named to the Compulsive Reader's Ten Best Reads list and was given the Military Writers' Society of America's Silver Award of Excellence. She is the recipient of the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community's Character and Ethics Committee awarded her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly's list of 14 "San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen." Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com . She blogs writers resources at Writer’s Digest’s 101 Best Websites pick www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com. Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews, and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry and fiction. Magdalena holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from CCNY (New York), an MBA from Charles Sturt University (NSW, Australia), and has studied literature on a postgraduate level at Oxford University (UK). She lives on a rural property in New South Wales with her husband and three children. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and two poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup. Find more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Product Details

• Paperback: 54 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (July 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1461159385
• ISBN-13: 978-1461159384
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeper into the Pond - A Celebration of Femininity, November 23, 2011

By 

JeRu (Oz) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity (Paperback)

DEEPER INTO THE POND - A Celebration of Femininity
by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson

This is a rich tapestry of a celebration.

It opens with Carolyn's verse and a ballad of marine exotica and moves to the name bearing poem "Narcissus Revisited" which mirrors the suffocation of `progress' that gives freedoms with one hand and takes with the other. Here the deadly oil slick wall kills as readily as any of glass - progressive killing -

Those who feel
new freedoms like I, some later-borns
unaware that they are new, accept
the yellow-bright shimmer
spread across the surface
as if it were our doing
or our due.

The next poem makes a nod to John Masefield's " Sea Fever" but taking it in role reversal with ship at dock and the poet manning the great swooping cranes that unload.

I want to go down to the sea at dawn
with a lunch bucket and thermos,

[and then]
pull
and push the big gear shifts to make a boom

tall as a building turn, swing down toward carloads
of gravel, clamp chunks of whatever freighters

I love the bittersweet of "Ariel" and its death-defying reach in to the unknowable.

You need
the music to tell your story,
to find it, to understand it
to know the truth,
to reach above the
ocean's surface
where
others
live.

Death is horribly present in the all too revelatory "what I once would have called a little tiff". Those of us who have lived long enough know too well of what she speaks...

i learned
to call a spat a spat,
an inheritance something
more than money,
an argument,
a fight-to-the-death.

Magdalena's opening poem both celebrates and denounces the hippy freedom of a generation that chose to `love' but not their children well.

secretly leaning in for more
parenting I didn't get
punishment I
deserved
no rod spared
here
no spoiling.

"Time Out" speaks of the guilt trip that is motherhood if you are, as many creatives are, a perfectionist and time your merciless master .

I shoot a response
what now?
two bullets of frustration land in
her timeless lap
as she slips off.

Magdalena has written a powerfully poignant tribute to all those frightened elderly flood victims, trapped in rising waters and psychologically unable to leave their lives behind -

You pretend
three hundred netfriends
hold your virtual hand
take you places
that don't involve
leaving
home
the perpetual womb
shroud
you've pushed into.

Magdalena's "Coming Back ends the collection with an almost whispered reverie on love and loss in a no man's land of guilt and recriminations -

No one dared point a finger.

We tried not to look at her but it was hard.

So we looked out of the corner of our eye when
we walked past, our heads thrown back fake
laughter all the while drawn towards the silence
of that pain the peripheral gravity that wouldn't
let us settle into our evening of forgetting.

This collection offers the feminine take on life, love and everything in between and does it with élan!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Woman's View - From Life to Death to Writing, September 6, 2011

By 

K. Ventrice "Karen Cioffi-Ventrice" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity (Paperback)

With moving and poetic imagery Deeper Into the Pond is a wonderful collection of poems focusing on women. This collection highlights all the roles women seem to so effortless embrace and handle, including that of aging. From life, to death, to writing, Deeper Into the Pond has something for everyone.

Karen Cioffi, Author, Ghostwriter, Freelance Writer
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A little gem, August 29, 2011

By 

V. J. Jose "Virgil Jose" (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity (Paperback)

Disclosure: I met Carolyn Johnson at a book fair and own her "Frugal" series so it was easy for my wife to persuade me to read her latest poetry. (I've never met Ms. Ball.).
I didn't say this out loud, but the title set off my "chick lit" alarm. Oops, wrong signal.
These little gems are about life, love, hunger, yearning, regret and all those things that make us human.
Moved me as much as anything we read in Engl Lit 101-102.
Virgil Jose
Author: "The Examined Life," a murder mystery in Kindle, Nook & paperback formats