Fire in the Garden, Poems (Muchos somos series) [Paperback]

Lucille Lang Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1997 | Series: Muchos somos series

Poetry. Lucille Lang Day was born in Oakland, California, and studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco State University. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, short stories, and reviews. Her first poetry collection, Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope, received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature from the San Francisco Foundation. "Lucille Day's stunning language in FIRE IN THE GARDEN has the metaphorical precision and complexity of Sylvia Plath, coupled with a voluptuousness that is all her own. She is afire in a world where 'White flames dance'"-Judy Wells. FIRE IN THE GARDEN is a book of beauties and mutilations, erotic intimacies, distances and mysteries, seductive dreams and sardonic deflations of our common dreamlife. It runs hot, cold and shivery, and will keep surprising you with the 'taste of ash' on its lips"-Alicia Suskin Ostriker. Day's books INFINITIES and WILD ONE are also available from SPD.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In the tradition of the best surrealism, Lucille Day's poems display unusual combinations of images that cohere to present a personal, and the same time universal, vision of everyday struggles--a vision probing the consoling powers of imagination, "the cool blue flight/of stars, flowing/through the endless black." Her powerful, sharp-edged, declarative poems speak to all of us. --Timothy Houghton -- Publisher Comments

About the Author

Lucille Lang Day is the author of five full-length poetry collections: THE CURVATURE OF BLUE (Cervena Barva, 2009), INFINITIES (Cedar Hill, 2002) WILD ONE (Scarlet Tanager, 2000), FIRE IN THE GARDEN (Mother's Hen, 1997), and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (Berkeley Poets' Workshop and Press, 1982), which received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. She has also published three poetry chapbooks. Chain Letter, her children's book, was published by Heyday in 2005. She received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her M.A. in zoology and Ph.D. in science and mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Mother's Hen (April 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0914370723
• ISBN-13: 978-0914370727
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,433,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lucille Lang Day is the author of a children's book, Chain Letter (Heyday), and eight poetry collections and chapbooks, including The Curvature of Blue (Cervena Barva) and Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope (BPW&P), which received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature. She also co-authored a textbook, How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science (Dale Seymour). She received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her M.A. in zoology and Ph.D. in science and mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley. The founder and director of a small press, Scarlet Tanager Books, she also served for 17 years as the director of the Hall of Health, an interactive children's museum in Berkeley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong, sharp-edged poems in the surrealist tradition., February 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fire in the Garden, Poems (Muchos somos series) (Paperback)

In the tradition of the best surrealism, Lucille Day's poems display unusual combinations of images that cohere to present a personal, and at the same time universal, vision of everyday struggles--a vision probing the consoling powers of imagination, "the cool blue flight/of stars, flowing/through the endless black." Her powerful, sharp-edged, declarative poems speak to all of us.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Natural Naturalist, June 25, 2003

By 

JT (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fire in the Garden, Poems (Muchos somos series) (Paperback)

Lucille Lang Day has earned the five stars not so much with this one title, as with her larger body of work, of which "Fire in the Garden" is but a snapshot. Eclectic and electric, Day's poetry is a feast for the brain. Her delicious, evocative imagery will excite readers of contemporary poetry and sustain hope that it is not about to be suffocated by the dry and abstruse theoretician/practitioners who have spread across so many of the arts over the last few generations. May all take notice how feasible it is for poetry to be at once accessible and intellectually commanding.
Day takes inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including "Fire in the Garden"'s first entire section based on the paintings and sculpture of such artists as O'Keefe, Dali, Diebenkorn. and Manuel Neri, whose sculpture exhibit prompted her to create a poetic dialog between two opposing voices from within, the one weary and negative, and the other challenging the first with its vibrant call to poetic awakeness: "Spiders in my skull spin fiery webs / and wild birds beat against my bones. / They want out. I, too, want out. / I want to walk where dusk spreads/gold dust on the earth, the mountains / humming, and jays and juncos land / on pine branches shaped like lightning."
Readers in whom Day's work resonates should appeal to her to engineer a republication of her first book,
"Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope," which contains in its first quarter what I'm convinced must be some of the finest biology-oriented poetry ever written. Investing years of her life in science (in which she earned a doctorate from UC Berkeley) paid double dividends giving inspiration to such resplendent poetic expression. In some small way, human culture is cheated every year that goes by without the opportunity for people to enjoy that bright outlook on the natural world so brilliantly depicted in language.