Review
For over thirty years Barbara Bloom has been quietly attending to the careful, solitary work of a dedicated writer, and through those years she has garnered a reputation as one of Santa Cruz's fines lyric poets. Her first full-length book, On the Water Meridian, gathers the best of her poems, and what a pleasure it is to have them, and to turn to them, during these troubling times. Barbara Bloom's poems are a clear window into a world of wonder, of childhood lived in the wilds of British Columbia, of a commitment to family and friendship, and an abiding reverence for the natural world. Here are poems of a life lived with loving attention, poems that praise and celebrate our incandescent moment in this world. Beneath the lyrical surface of her poems, there is a courage and tenacity of spirit that is prepared to go through the fire to save what she loves. Her work has earned a quietness at the center, where she can say, 'Walk slowly. / Empty yourself / of all cruelty. / What is sent forth as love / returns as love. / Reach out your hand / in good faith.' Her poems enact that love, they reach out to us, they give us faith, they help us cherish this life. --Joseph Stroud, author of Country of Light, Below Cold Mountain, Signatures, and In the Sleep of Rivers
About the Author
Barbara Bloom grew up in California and British Columbia. She earned a bachelor's degree in literature from UC Santa Cruz and a master's degree in English and creative writing from San Francisco State, and has taught composition and creative writing at Cabrillo College for over twenty years. She has a grown daughter and two grandsons and lives with her musician husband and their dog in the countryside south of Santa Cruz. On the Water Meridian is her first full-length book.
