Customer Reviews

Letter from the Lawn

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What always gets to me about Bobbi Lurie's poetry is how approachable it is and yet how subtle, without ever becoming coy or sentimental. In Giving Up Art she writes "No thought or social condition can change the frantic/ Pounding of the bird against the bookcase glass." She can make any image palpable so that it sticks in your mind and stays there, as in Resolutions after Christmas ...After the meager gifts/ After the wanting gratitude/ After the messages of salvation/ And disintegrating tinsel/stuck/to the heel of her shoe/ She heads towards the imaginary horizon. In The Psychiatrist Says She's Severely Demented these lines have stayed with me "Her face and hair have the same gray sheen/ Like a black and white drawing smudged on the edges. Her poetry is like walking through an art gallery.

Bobbi Lurie's second poetry collection is even more powerful than her first. Through Lurie's strong imagery, the reader is allowed entrance into the "vast circumference of the universe". Lurie's universe isn't always pretty; she tackles painful topics in a way that brings the darkness to the surface and gives us permission to face our own vulnerability.

Letter From the Lawn is a book to read and reread.

Visual artist and therapist Bobbi Lurie presents her second poetry collection Letter from the Lawn, an anthology of free-verse contemplations that often return to the themes of plant life amid the reminiscences of childhood, aging, transformation, and the onset of death. A poignant and contemplative collection reflecting upon the endless circle of life. "Dying Blooms": hesitant to reject her they reject her / room is open all is visible // yesterday more vibrant green / a field like emeralds / adhering like a necklace // a field / stalks dying longing to be touched / their once blossoming / more memory than fingers