Customer Reviews

Tonight, My Love, In The Garden

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At first reading this book, I was caught off guard and didn't know what to expect. The further I read, the deeper I got caught in it's web of mystery and romance. I found myself taking words and sentences out of the poems and posting them on my refrigerator as an inspirational thought for the day. Her words stay with you and leave a lasting impression.

What one encounters in poetry of late is a disturbing trend, gradual yet persistent, toward misalignment of interpretive force and technical command of written language. It often seems that the uninspired poet, awkward and unsure of his or her ultimate goal, substitutes words for theme: in short, the best disposal of a poem without focus is a sepulchre of words. Most encouragingly, that is not the case with "Tonight, My Love, in the Garden." Ms. Callinicos serves the poetic legacy of the twenty-first century, a legacy of stylistic and thematic awakening inherited from Yeats, Eliot, Millay, and Pound, with utter conviction, and the successes of her efforts are evident throughout this book. Combining her original poetry with beautifully artistic, evocative photographs, Ms. Callinicos weaves a thread of subdued but wondrous power indicative of a deep insight into the unique relationships among the human, natural, and supernatural worlds. Callinicos, like Emily Dickinson, explores the ambiguity of human existence by transcending conventional associations of Death and Beauty and allowing their intertwining characteristics to flow to the surface of her works. In essence a collection of poems expressing the uncertainty of human relationships, "Tonight, My Love, in the Garden" celebrates the cyclical nature of life from a uniquely modern perspective. Inseparable from the beauties which grant value to an individual's life, Death is, in Ms. Callinicos' representation, in equal portions the force which both liberates and enslaves: the power of memory is to free us to experience new passions as well as to allow us to recall those we have already known. Ms. Callinicos personifies this ambiguity by highlighting the inherent ambivalence of the natural imagery which she employs to brilliant effect throughout the book. In this book, Ms. Callinicos has created a coherent, effectively sustained theme expressed in beautifully poetic, meaningful language...a rare accomplishment, and one which quite eludes most contemporary writers. Perhaps, from the evidence of this compelling work, the prospects for post-"post-modernist" poetry are not so dismal after all.