Death and His Lorca

Naomi Lowinsky's Death and His Lorca is a powerful volume of poems about love, about loss but also about how lost ones still stream indelibly through a life. Though the book touches on Jungian symbols of The Self, The Anima and Animus, mostly it presents The Shadow: the fire, the wild and unknown as poems probe the lives and legacy of grandparents, parents, lovers, spouses. Again and again, Lorca's passion and Lowinsky's intertwine, adding a memorable musical lyric to the whole book. In a literal yet metaphoric way the forever question being asked by this poet is: "Who has the passports?/Must she cross/the border alone?"

- Susan Terris, author of Familiar Tense

 

The poems in Death and His Lorca, by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky, contain many deaths and close encounters with mortality, but the book is as much about life as about death. Lowinsky tells the stories of the lost and channels Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, as movingly as she channels her own. And there is much dancing - dances for the dead and of the dead. In "Flamenco Dancer," which opens the collection, the dancer's "spine / is a wild and supple snake" as she arouses the spirits; in "The Russian Woman's Daughter," the "dead do a circle / dance around us." Lowinsky is equally at home with the facts of history, "the grim trains  the grieving / skies of northern / Europe," and the realm of myth and dream, where a daughter of Atatürk can show her a library of books "on the unearthed goddess." Beauty and mystery are abundant in this collection. Despite death's tenacity, it's an inspiring read.

- Lucille Lang Day, author of Birds of San Pancho and Other

  Poems of Place, coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California

           

Naomi does a wonderful job weaving together her dreams, her family, her heritage, Jung, Lorca - and they all seem to inform her rich and active imagination. The result is poetry that is as much a pleasure to read as it is engaging and tender. Each poem takes us on a journey where Naomi reveals a part of her life and, in so doing, she invites us along, not only to share her revelations but to inspire us to explore our own lives and impulses.

- Stewart Florsheim, author of A Split Second of Light