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Parallel Press releases 'The Twig Songs' by Gwen Ebert
Posted 6/1/2000
Poet Gwen Ebert
explores the love, sorrow and wonder spawned by contact between humans
and the earth in the seventh chapbook of the Parallel Press, The
Twig Songs. The 15-piece collection mirrors the fragility and emotion
of life with that of nature; an ecologist's perspective in the words
of a poet.
Ebert, a native of Wisconsin, works as a naturalist and environmental educator in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has been awarded both the 1999 Heart Quarterly Poetry Prize and the 1996 Guy Owen Poetry Prize from The Southern Poetry Review. Her poetry has appeared in publications such as Passages North, Southern Poetry Review, The Blue Mesa Review and the Cream City Review.
A chapbook is a small-format literary work, usually of poetry or essays. The Parallel Press, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, has reintroduced the older publishing technique to feature the literary work of poets and essayists.
Each chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions for six chapbooks are $50. Titles may be ordered by writing: The Parallel Press, 236 Memorial Library, 728 State St., Madison, WI 53706. For information, see their Web site at http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu, or phone (608) 262-2600. E-mail inquiries may be sent to kfrazier@library.wisc.edu
Here's a sample from the collection:
THE LITTLE BAT TRAINER
wakes at odd hours,
wearing his old baggies,
head in a muffle.
He brings his glowing jar,
the weighted socks. Sprigs
of soaked grass in his shoes.
The world is turning over.
Night side leaves a cool breath.
This he loves:
barely the light and limbs
bare, color of no color.
Fog dampened hair.
If the bats return
all swung down, half-winged,
singing the music that no one hears,
then by stars
he will toss them the sock weight.
As they drop to dive for him
in their blindness,
no one imagines
the faces
of mice he knows
are angels.
