Customer Reviews

Stone Pillars: A Book of Poetry

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Known to her online fans as "Wishes", Judith K. Parker is one of the most prolific and talented writers to emerge from the Internet publishing arena. Equally proficient at writing prose or poetry, skits or parodies, Judith has built a reputation for her incredibly sensitive commentaries on the human condition and an economy of language in her writing style that makes every sentence count - every scene, every allusion come to life. STONE PILLARS is an extraordinary collection of some of the best poems by this marvelously talented poet including the piece which gives the collection its title and which has long been a personal favorite among Judith's fans. Even readers whose tastes do not normally extend to poetry will find themselves turning the pages here, riveted by the simple honesty and quiet impact of these beautifully crafted poems. A true delight, STONE PILLARS gets my HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!

These are thoughtful, searching poems. They don't strain for effects and so are all the more moving when, again and again, they touch on the emotion being contemplated by their subjects. The emotion is often love, and Judith Parker has much to tell us about how painful and how necessary this is to us through the words of her characters.

Equally impressive is her command of her medium. Subtle rhythms preserve the sense of a human voice speaking each poem, yet ensure that each word packs its full weight of meaning on the page. Judith Parker's masterly management of her verse, and her discriminating deployment of language, ensure that these poems are ones which anyone can savour.

"Stone Pillars" by Judith K. Parker is a book of poetry about the first seasons of the television show, "Xena: Warrior Princess." The poems here focus, as the show did in its early years, on the multi-layered, complex relationship between the lead characters. But you don't need to have ever seen those shows to understand this book. Parker's verse is always accessible - inhabited by three-dimensional people whose emotional lives we not only understand but care about. Her imagery is strong and her wit is subtle.

Writing poetry about cultural work in another medium places Parker's book in the tradition of "Pictures from Brueghel," William Carlos Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning book from the early sixties.