Shift: to change or move from one position, place, direction, belief to another; to try varied expedients, to do the best one can. "Shift " chronicles a journey of the soul from acted upon to actor. It is a journey we will all take eventually, willing or not. "Shift" draws its power from the distillation of story into lines of poetry, the lines echoing the chaotic motion of life's major journeys: the intensity of compressed moments of discovery, the stretch of moments of loss. "Shift" creates a place to reflect, refresh, and renew our belief in ourselves and to see that we are not alone - the path is broad and there are many friends along the way. Our stories are all connected - anything is possible.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Wylde Poetry,
By Merlie (Maryland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Shift (Paperback)
Grace Cavalieri, writing for The Montserrat Review, says: "Tammy Vitale's first book Shif is a blueprint of her journey through social change to self-actualization. It is a triumph over dark forces and the internal quarrels that eventually turn into strength. Women's self realizations are surprisingly the same: Mainstream, women poets live through a sense of isolation, guilt, then the powerful current of hope that uplifts the poem from the page.
Responsibility, moral obligations make the female gender a lost generation until she leaves everyone else, just long enough to find her own soul of pleasures. This is what some people call "self." Tammy Vitale's poems are details of color for Vitale is a consummate artist of the "plastique" arts of paint and clay. The book is alive with the visualized rainbow of thought and spirit. It is mythic in its proportions, and wild at times, quiet at other times. To read it is to become part of some ancient female ritual where primal beings take shape and change shape into mind, heart, thoughtforms. From Epistle (pg. 45) ... Your sisters sit in a circle, can you see them? One is dark as night, her eyes are stars; comets fly from her mouth when she speaks. One has fire for hair - she dances among us, lighting our clothes with red flames. One sits in the center blindfolded. She wishes not to be Seen. We form a wall around her; sing a song whose meter makes new meaning from old words. This is a slender book. Its poems are not verbose, words are carefully selected, the verbiage is crystalline, delicate, yet powerful as a honed piece of steel that moves in the wind. If you read this through, you will enter the forest, receive blessings and enchantments, and come out of your own wilderness into light. The book is dedicated to "Women everywhere/be they already Wylde/or/working on it or/dreaming about it/or/just wondering what it means:/may your feet find their path/ and your heart its home." Every poem in this book can stand alone as memorable. Can you think of another book in recent time like this? It was culled from 100's of pages until the kernal of a massive manuscript was preserved for us in form. Tammy Vitale takes a thrilling stance as a poet with her first book
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wylde Woman Journey,
By
This review is from: Shift (Paperback)
Reading SHIFT is like taking a journey and what a journey it is! There are owls, snakes, dragons, tree frogs, fat toads, black snakes along the way. There is a dream-like quality to these colorful poems--reading them is like viewing a verbal masterpiece. The poet is on a quest for answers, for knowledge, for home. There is pain, terror, fear and damage. But Vitale is not afraid to explore scary things that the universe presents in both past and present. There are gnawed bones and dragons.
Vitale's tongue is not "tangled in spider webs", in fact, through forward moving, active imagistic language, there is a sense of freedom and exhilaration in these poems. One of my favorite poems in the book is "Discourse," where at church "black and white began to bleed/and the words became silver mice/tumbling like pearls/beneath a leaden sky. What incredible images! Vitale lights a path to find a way out of the unknown. A journey worth taking with her.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poems for Wylde Women and the Men Who Love Them,
By
This review is from: Shift (Paperback)
Tammy Vitale dedicates Shift to "Wylde Women Everywhere/be they already wylde/or working on it/or just dreaming about it." "My passion," says Vitale, "is writing a different ending to the old story that we have no power to shape our own lives."
The "shift" that is storied here starts with being acted upon by outside events: "If I play the part/of sleeping princess/will you kiss me wide awake?" It moves through the recognition that change is occurring and through uncertainly about the cost of such change: "There is mercy here: in the space between/was and will be, I am.../breath comes. Mercy has a cost." And "...I can't even find the seam/think I might have to rip open/think I might hurt/...think if I could just wake up/or maybe it's go to sleep/then I would be normal again..." and ends in a glorious, even defiant, declaration: "I am red/pepper/cinnamon/crimson tide/lava/bright marker/favorite crayon/war./I am red./ Are you ready?" Shift is finding a groundswell of support from readers who discover themselves in the pages. Sara [Ebenreck] Leeland, PhD, co-editor of of Presenting Women Philosophers, writes of "Shift": "It makes me want to name my own experiences in more depth." Terri St Cloud, bonesighart.com poet and painter, finds "The thread of truth and knowing that leaps off the pages makes [Shift] well worth reading or recommending to women from all walks of life...[Shift] touches spots in people that are hard to reach. It uses poetry to sink down to soul level, sneak in sideways, awaken the `shifts' that are waiting to take place."
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