Author: Amy Nawrocki

I am a poet with six poetry collections and three history books, co-authored by my husband and muse, Eric D. Lehman. I teach English and Creative Writing at the University of Bridgeport.
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Reconnaissance: The Poetry of Amy Nawrocki (with audio)

Check out the latest Issue of Nutmeg Chatter and my interview with J. Timothy Quirk and a reading of “Giverny” from Reconnaissance.

jtimothyquirk's avatarNUTMEG CHATTER

nutmeg chatter amyProfessor Amy Nawrocki teaches Creative Writing and English at the University of Bridgeport. Her fist collection of poems “Four Blue Eggs” won the Poetry Prize for Homebound Publications. Professor Nawrocki visited WAPJ studios in Torrington, CT to discuss her new book “RECONNAISANCE”  The first portion of the interview is below and will be aired Wednesday morning.

Amy Nawrocki’s “RECONNAISANCE” was created under the theme of “inspiration and investigation”. Nawrocki has always been drawn to the work of other artists, writers, musicians and often her poetry can be inspired by her travels and exploration of those other artists Nawrocki wanted to think about those origins of inspiration and literary inspiration is found throughout her poetry. There are references to Percy Shelly, to Lord Byron and Anais Nin” among many literary giants. There are also references to artists like Dali and Brassai and there is inspiration found from music (references to jazz and to…

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Gardening Blues

This poem appears in Four Blue Eggs, available if you click here. A few more clicks and it will conveniently appear in your mailbox or on your doorstop.

Arboriculture

I’m sure the red mulch
spread beneath the dormant azalea
has in its loamy peat the macerated remnants
of a massive Louisiana cypress.
I know it in my bones.

Somewhere in the swamps
of Atchafalaya, an ancient
colossus towering hundreds of feet
fell with the unheard echo
of a stolen temple bell. The harvested

trophy died again at the mill,
chomped to confetti by the grimacing
false teeth of a machine. I suffer
the russet sin with my arms elbow deep
in agriculture as I distribute
the ground cover around sweet william

and verbena blossoms in the front yard.
I’m hardly as wicked with those;
their plastic trays were purchased
from the farm stand where tiny, ripe
organic strawberries pleased my lips

and sour cherries melted like wine
lozenges in my mouth. I spit the pits
out the car window on the drive home.
But I am wicked to the core
and today, the supermarket is closer

to the mail drop and the library
where mediocre books, half-read
are overdue, and those bags of the dirty fill,
stacked on the concrete walkway near the store
seem so utilitarian, so earthy

and convenient, plus I hate the weeds
that the bag promises to squelch
and the neighbor, with her elegant
foxgloves and geraniums is really
the one to blame for this. But I cannot

loose the swamp cypresses
from my mind, these conifers, these
sacred fellows holding the soil in
with their gracious roots, exhaling
with delicate silence. I feel like God

doling out the flood waters
with bloody hands handsomely disguised
by garden gloves. I am a fraud, a pirate,
and when the levees break again
I will sink into a counterfeit soil and drown.

gourd blossom 4

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Companionship and Inspiration

Sing to Me
Sing to me, Oh heavenly Muse,
Sing of the sea, “wine dark” and full of mysteries;
Sing your generous musings into my untamed ears,
Guide me to places where islands peek out and crest from the ocean’s swell of waves.

Speak to me of sailing, foreign speaking travelers, roads and pathways winding and      steep, gravel covered, tree-lined and mountain rich, those which frame
the ocean’s mighty blue-black plentitudes in their sights.

Sing to me of gannets; the birds of prehistory captured in flight, white winged with sun-touched caps and eyes blue as the empty sky.

Sing to me of porcupines, earth dwellers of the spiny quills, shy and clover-munching; Sing of rabbits tramping through forests, stealing a moment to look out and survey the
open path, only to scurry playfully into the underbrush.

Bring to my ears the far-away call of the coyotes, watching over the mountain campsite. Bring to me news of whales, giants so gentle in their swimming, the sea’s expanse seems hardly touched by their brawn.

And Muse, bring to me tidings of love, companionship, a hand that reaches out and takes me into the pleasing sunshine, so that we will walk toward the horizon and find a
moment now and then to make love among the brilliant colors in the expansive catastrophe of this world.

For Eric

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West Rock Ridge
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Normandy

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Eric at Gold Beach in Normandy, 2014

“The Leaves are Falling off the Trees”  ~Normandy 2014

Tanks do not float
and we cannot go backwards.

West to east, last to first
8:00 to 6:30
Juno Sword
Gold Utah
Omaha

Resistance bicycles, full moon,
coca cola, chewing gum,
cigarettes.

Donkey in a small fenced field.
Cemetery cat, friendly, fat, chaffinches.
Sacrifice, courage, cowardice.
How does your garden grow?

Ten thousand crosses—With eyes squinted,
the markings look
like school children holding hands.
Red beach, barbed wire.
Omaha.

Fox green, fox red.
Easy green, easy red.
Dog
white, green, red.
Paratrooper.
Charlie.

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Weightless

A poem first published in Potato Eaters, published by Finishing Line Press, copyright 2008.

Weightless

Autumn, the ballet, dances
through the speechless trees, resplendent
motion uttering no sound.
Painted atmospheres tickle
a spectator, that flesh colored leaf
standing at the center, earthless –
a Renaissance bather in a silent film.
Beneath the young girl’s feet,
cold clay moonrocks touch tenderly.
Standing motionless, she takes flight
like a naked sparrow, windblown;
no chill strikes her skin; she listens
to all that is quiet and warm,
warmth which radiates not
from the yellow sun, but from her angel spine
with knowledge of the breathless wind.
Unworldly, unafraid, enjoying
the dance she sees, fancying
herself a participant.

Click here to see my poem “How Poetry Differs from Gardening,” in Fox Adoption Magazine.

Click here to connect with Homebound Publications, and my latest book, Reconnaissance.

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Happy Birthday

This poem was originally published in Four Blue Eggs, which is available from Homebound Publications (ON SALE) as well as on Amazon (paperback or e-book ON SALE!). Please consider purchasing a copy or downloading it for your Kindle or Nook and enjoying the poems on a summer day. In these transitional weeks between mother’s day and father’s day, you can read poems that honor family, nature, renewal and stamina. Enjoy. Buy a copy for your mom. This poem is for my mother, who’s birthday is today, June 1st. She’d be 72.

On My Mother’s Sixty-sixth Birthday

The hike is pleasant; the trail markers
are new, ferns and mountain laurel bloom
along the path. A soft whispering breeze
says something about remembrances
and a flimsy gasp escapes from my lungs.
Wishing for its own voice, a trickle of water
inches down a slope of jagged rocks as if
wanting just to touch something, however cool.
In a clearing, I see across the rounded tops of trees
into the valley and into the complex
gathering of green—the heart of June,
new and curious. Yet everything seems
to be empty. Despite the emeralds
all I spy are gaps; rifts appear where leaves
and bark separate, the gulf between earth
and sky is full of ever-present grey stones.
More than a half-life has passed
since we wondered whether the hair
she was losing would grow back black
or peppered with white ash, but I cannot
remember what we decided. Memory
in its detachment is as insufficient
as a summer waterfall.

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The Train Ride Home

I, the Wicked

Naked, I am forgiven,
waiting and wondering, without
apology. My life has been
the rotation of planets. My happiness—
mercury, climbing liquid of dreams.
I am the red submission of sunset.

Never did the gods laugh with me.
Night advanced, moody and feline,
and I became captive. My cohorts,
jackals and earthworms, seethed
with indifference. We danced like tumbleweed,
unbelievable, burning a crowd of green
with our weeded uprising.

And this is how it went,
when the end came, when time
boxed and electric, sagged
like an infant into my arms.
Morning acquiesced, I removed
the shackles and boarded the train
back home, back
to the lace and emptiness
of world. Judged still
I am a shadow.

Noontime,
the animals and I await
the crutch of sleep.

An old poem, but one I can’t really let go of. IMG_20130602_134814

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An Agenda Less Substantial Than Sight

Here’s a poem from Potato Eaters, published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press. I’m watching Mr. Turner, the biopic about J.M.W. Turner, and the poem references one of Turner’s paintings.

An Agenda Less Substantial Than Sight
Driving down the parkway trying to scratch
something from the mind, how the rain
and the slickness of the road escapes quickly
and what the thaw means.
You had been saying how cold
it has been between us lately. Not thinking
of the drive ahead—a car turned over
on its side has been placed there
by some immense hand, the first stroke
made by a painter on an empty canvas.
An ambulance, and the first color is red.
This is what Turner meant with his fires.
Not boats, not a singular bird,
charcoal at the base of the canvas, not
strokes of white forced in the background.
But the fire, smack
in the middle, drawing the eye like a dart.

It must be an ending, though,
Burial at Sea, because you know
which stoke must have come first.
Sometimes eyes wish they had an agenda
less substantial than sight,
so as not to see the flame’s inner glow,
or the turmoil within a stroke.
A way to see such that shadows
could be separated from light.

The full title of his painting is Peace–Burial at Sea. (image courtesy of the Tate Gallery)

Peace - Burial at Sea exhibited 1842 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00528
Peace – Burial at Sea exhibited 1842 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00528

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