She Wore Emerald Then is collaboration on the subject of motherhood by award-winning poets Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson, both of them mothers and daughters. They worked together on a book of love poetry called Cherished Pulse to the acclaim of reviewers. She Wore Emerald Then is available as both an e-chapbook and paperback and is illustrated with tender photographs by May Lattanzio. As it happens, it was released the week of the death of Carolyn's mother--a fitting tribute. It is a beautifully presented, tender and strikingly original gift book, ideal for Mother's Day or any day when you want to celebrate the notion of moherhood in its broades sense.
She Wore Emerald Then (Celebration Series of Poetry)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
She Wore Emerald Then is more than a collection of poems; it is a collection of life. Each, poignantly written, takes the reader to the brink of emotion and resurrects another time and place as the page is turned. Filled with beautiful words, She Wore Emerald Then is also filled with the complexities and challenges life visits upon us from conception to last breath; a verbal and visual experience from start to finish.
An exceptional read, I recommend this book to all who love the written word and the beauty of its gift.
~Reviewed by Jozette Aaron, editor of DeSilva's News
An exceptional read, I recommend this book to all who love the written word and the beauty of its gift.
~Reviewed by Jozette Aaron, editor of DeSilva's News
From the Inside Flap
She wore Emerald Then was honored for excellence by the Military Writers Society of America and was a finalist by USA Book News. It is second in the multi award-winning Celebration series of book by two poets working from two different hemispheres of the planet.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What relationship is more complex or more elemental than the mother-child bond? Abraham Lincoln said, 'All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.' Toni Morrison wrote, 'Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.'
Both of those quotes, as well as one by Honore de Balzac at the beginning of SHE WORE EMERALD THEN, perfectly describe this collection of poems by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball---poetry that catches at your soul. Both of them reprise their poems from Ball's QUARK SOUP, Howard-Johnson's TRACINGS, and their joint collection, CHERISHED PULSE. Fans of CHERISHED PULSE will be pleased to learn that the poets continue to write poems that don't sound either like banal Hallmark cards or the bitter-at-dysfunctional-family jeremiads that habitually torture MFA writing workshop participants.
The two poets complement each other (with words accompanied by stunning photography by May Lattanzio). The opus covers both the grand sweep of the birth of all universal life and the private universe populated by only an adult daughter watching her mother struggle to eat dinner and remembering how her mother washed her one slip. While Ball explores the cosmic continuum and traces us all back to the mother spark that set the stars burning, Howard-Johnson concentrates her portraiture on the deeply personal. But Ball also talks about the oxytocin haze of giving birth and her mother vomiting from cancer drugs. To quote the last poem in the collection, 'Hallmark Couldn't Possibly Get This Right.' When you read about the tough love of the universe or Ball's sienna childhood photograph or Howard-Johnson's mother forgetting her name, you want to cry and hug your mother (and your children, if you have them), because they capture the eternal tug of war between joy and sorrow in the mother-child bond."
Both of those quotes, as well as one by Honore de Balzac at the beginning of SHE WORE EMERALD THEN, perfectly describe this collection of poems by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball---poetry that catches at your soul. Both of them reprise their poems from Ball's QUARK SOUP, Howard-Johnson's TRACINGS, and their joint collection, CHERISHED PULSE. Fans of CHERISHED PULSE will be pleased to learn that the poets continue to write poems that don't sound either like banal Hallmark cards or the bitter-at-dysfunctional-family jeremiads that habitually torture MFA writing workshop participants.
The two poets complement each other (with words accompanied by stunning photography by May Lattanzio). The opus covers both the grand sweep of the birth of all universal life and the private universe populated by only an adult daughter watching her mother struggle to eat dinner and remembering how her mother washed her one slip. While Ball explores the cosmic continuum and traces us all back to the mother spark that set the stars burning, Howard-Johnson concentrates her portraiture on the deeply personal. But Ball also talks about the oxytocin haze of giving birth and her mother vomiting from cancer drugs. To quote the last poem in the collection, 'Hallmark Couldn't Possibly Get This Right.' When you read about the tough love of the universe or Ball's sienna childhood photograph or Howard-Johnson's mother forgetting her name, you want to cry and hug your mother (and your children, if you have them), because they capture the eternal tug of war between joy and sorrow in the mother-child bond."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
From the child looking up to her mother, to the young woman giving birth, to the grown daughter watching her mother die; these poems celebrate all phases of that most important mother-daughter relationship. Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdelena Ball show motherhood in different, but equally effective ways.
I love the images in Carolyn's poems. They feel warm; pictures you can almost touch. My particular favorite is "Dandelions in Autumn." I remember the same scene trying to see if my mother, or any other human being who would stand still long enough, liked butter by holding yellow flowers, buttercups in my case, under her chin.
Maggie's poems are starker, more cosmic. My favorite is "Oxytocin Flow." In recreating the experience of giving birth it evokes memories of the first relationship with the tiny person, "a high pitched croon of terror only a mother could love." I remember it well.
There are the painful memories too when a mother is the one needing care. The images of "Mother Daughter" are almost too painful.
This is a perfect collection to celebrate Mother's Day, or any day when we ponder our relationship to our mothers and remember being mothers and daughters ourselves.
I love the images in Carolyn's poems. They feel warm; pictures you can almost touch. My particular favorite is "Dandelions in Autumn." I remember the same scene trying to see if my mother, or any other human being who would stand still long enough, liked butter by holding yellow flowers, buttercups in my case, under her chin.
Maggie's poems are starker, more cosmic. My favorite is "Oxytocin Flow." In recreating the experience of giving birth it evokes memories of the first relationship with the tiny person, "a high pitched croon of terror only a mother could love." I remember it well.
There are the painful memories too when a mother is the one needing care. The images of "Mother Daughter" are almost too painful.
This is a perfect collection to celebrate Mother's Day, or any day when we ponder our relationship to our mothers and remember being mothers and daughters ourselves.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The poems
overall grabbed me but I was particularly moved by these two:
Carolyn's poem, Mother in December, brought tears to my night time reading. I could feel the emerald gown against my skin, reach for the covered buttons clasped in their satin loops and see the rhinestones in her mother's ears as she lay abed.
I was particularly moved by "Mother and Daughter, The Thing I learned from Depends..."
as we had my nearly 95-year-old mother here for Passover yesterday. She arrived in her wheelchair via the medical transport service, with a plastic bag carrying an extra depends, just in case...
"I await her word, rather than cut her roast beef..." your line stayed with me as I placed mom's dinner in front of her.
And then came the ending to the poem revealing that Carolyn's mother had forgotten her name.
So tenderly put.
Thank you to Carolyn for sharing herself -- and your mother -- through these poems.
overall grabbed me but I was particularly moved by these two:
Carolyn's poem, Mother in December, brought tears to my night time reading. I could feel the emerald gown against my skin, reach for the covered buttons clasped in their satin loops and see the rhinestones in her mother's ears as she lay abed.
I was particularly moved by "Mother and Daughter, The Thing I learned from Depends..."
as we had my nearly 95-year-old mother here for Passover yesterday. She arrived in her wheelchair via the medical transport service, with a plastic bag carrying an extra depends, just in case...
"I await her word, rather than cut her roast beef..." your line stayed with me as I placed mom's dinner in front of her.
And then came the ending to the poem revealing that Carolyn's mother had forgotten her name.
So tenderly put.
Thank you to Carolyn for sharing herself -- and your mother -- through these poems.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Catches the reader in the throat
I read this collection of thirty poems slowly, allowing myself only a few at a time usually before I went to bed. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Zoe Brooks
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cosmic imagery and homely down-to-earthness
This is a collection of poetry that movingly illustrates many aspects of motherhood and, if you are a poetry lover, there is much that you will find appealing and... Read more
Published on May 6, 2009 by Helena Harper, poet, children's author & teacher. Bringing you a world of FEEL GOOD WRITING!
