Customer Reviews

Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems

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Wanda Phipp's poems are deliciously spare and delightful to read. She balances the acutal with the metaphysicaL in some acute and beautiful ways through the spaces she moves in and out of:
"a kiss not a kiss but a city operational I am with tea and mobility" #28 Like a Wallace Stevens orange on a Sunday morning, but without the formalisms, these poems glow with a garden of City delights and sometimes, doubts. But underlying the collection is a journey, and a celebration of being an artist in New York, which can be both a city of constraints (survival work) and semi-or subconscious visions and serendipities...From many angles she portrays her own musings and the City's light. Read it!

I was given this book by a friend. Since I have very strong opinions about poetry--having grown up reading Anne sexton, May Sarton, Auden, etc--I thought, "I'm not even going to look at this. Nice cover, though."
Imagine my surprise when I glanced through it, and was so caught up that i sat down, poured a glass of wine, and read all the way through. i called my mom and read her a poem. I read one to my husband. I read one to the cat. I was surprised: the poems are seemingly unassuming, but their power accumulates, and they finally offer a true and piercingly insightful look into a modern woman's real heart.
This book had become part of my life. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Wanda Phipps' 66 Morning Poems, teaches us to be more in-tune with our own morning thoughts as we read the ones she has captured here in this book. Succinct crystal clear observation is the fuel Wanda Phipps provides her reader so to feel and see for themselves. Wanda Phipps does and will continue to make the world a better place. SEE HER LIVE!

Wanda Phipps' Wake-Up Calls 66 Morning Poems is a delightful read wherever and whenever you choose to pick up this book. This series of poems makes for the catalyst to a great day. I have enjoyed reading these poems in the early morning when I wake a prepare for my day. I love taking this book on the train and reading as I head to work. I feel a sense of being centered in Wanda's choice of words and feel like she's tapped into the early morning experiences we all go through in life. After finishing, I felt like I wanted more poems. I wanted each morning to continue reading through her colorful textures. Wanda evokes an energy that wakes this readers morning peak. At this point, I will explore searching for further reading material on Wanda Phipps. I truly enjoyed reading her poems not once, but several times since I've purchased this book.

Regards,

Thomas Paul

The style is so appealing, lyrical-sensual. Wanda Phipps evokes a kind of dreamy Bohemian lifestyle one doesn't hear enough about in this high-pressure type-A world. Thanks to her for helping to bring that back.

Reviewed by Jennifer Leblanc for Small Spiral Notebook

In Wake Up Calls, 66 Morning Poems, Wanda Phipps explores her own fresh morning thoughts in this wonderful collection. Written each morning (or hung-over afternoon) Phipps mapped out her mind, body and city as a writer, woman and a New Yorker.

Her main theme is that of an urban female trying to reconcile her own creativity with the rushing modern world in which we live. Any writer reading these poems will feel as if Phipps has read their own hearts and expressed it for them. #19 is about escaping the daily grind with literature (Anne Rice and Allen Ginsburg, to be exact). #8 concerns ?things needing/ to be done needing/ mind space.? In #54 she communicates the fears of every female writer:

Will there be time
To do my hair
Check my email
Write my opus
Have a baby
Acquire a career
Erase my doubts.

And then there is the eloquent simplicity of #26: ?Today is not a day for poetry.? We understand.

Her New York Setting adds greatly to her poems when she describes her Chelsea neighborhood, the subway, even a movie set.

Although not all of the poems fit into a certain mold, they still stand out on their own. In # 27, for instance, Phipps recounts the diversity of her ancestors, their choices and paths and their effect on her own existence. #44, one of the shorter and simple less complex poems, paints a picture of her cat sitting on her computer, which any pet owner will love.

There are more universal pieces included. #23 and 27 deal with fears and regrets, respectively, that are both uniquely hers but commonly felt by everyone. Everyone has a place they wish they had stayed in or left; a person to love more or less; roads not taken in life.

The refreshing feel about this collection comes from Phipps, fresh out of sleep, suddenly conscious, writing suddenly and honestly, not edited or influenced by a day load of thoughts and experiences. Each poem is the literary equivalent of seeing the poet without her make up and hair done. There is no hesitation. This is a woman going forward into day through her art.

Wanda Phipps' lovely book Wake-Up Calls: 66 Morning Poems contains a delightful collection of poems which are simultaneously delicate and powerful, personal yet open to universal comprehension and appreciation. Ms. Phipps brilliantly captures emotion and experience as she awakens on 66 different occasions, sometimes taking the reader with her further through her day, other times choosing to remain in bed, processing both her external environment and internal complexities.

The book is small and beautifully put together (the quilt-patterned cover art is gorgeous); one can easily read the entire work in under one hour. But to fully absorb the charm and eloquence of Ms. Phipps' poetry, the collection should be read several times. This is one of those wonderful works which only becomes richer the more it is read. Wake-Up Calls takes on a life of its own, and it is a reader's privilege to be privy to that momentum.