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.
Posted by Homebound Publications. Many thanks to Diane Donovan for her review.
Early praise from Midwest Book Review for Amy Nawrocki’s forthcoming collection, Reconnaissance: by Diane Donovan of Midwest Review.
“Poems inspired by other poems aren’t a rarity: indeed, they are a typical pleasure of poets; because to read others’ works is to become inspired to create your own. It’s been said that the majority of poetry readers are themselves poets. But Amy Nawrocki carries this thought to a higher level in giving voice to Reconnaissance: a mission to probe the influence and presence of other works and to drink deeply of their approaches with the idea of filling one’s writing soul with the inspirations of others.
“But, how to translate this tall drink of water into one’s own works? Ah, that’s where the beauty of Reconnaissance comes in; because like a good investigative mission, it’s all about discovery, translation, and (ultimately) crafting something new and different from the pursuit of this style of happiness.
“Many a good book opens with a map to its contents, pointing out its likely direction, and Reconnaissance‘s map is ‘Guided Tour’, which tells of a circular journey through the cobwebs of life and back again: “Memorize a few loose-leaf pages,/note important dates with precision. Mention/the children by name and explain the heritage…”
“One strength of the poetic structure Nawrocki chooses lies in its capture of these dates, times, moments, and most of all, these atmospheres. In such a world the poet becomes a chronicler of life as well as the poems of others: a process captured here and there by observational pieces about readers, subjects, and writers alike whose lives are more than a folio of interconnected words, however famous they might become: “On the reverse, the message that would escort/Shelley’s poems to an upstairs room where/a man had decided he no longer craved her smile:/lots and lots of love, she wrote in haste, crossing/t’s so that the ink missed their intersection, and/congratulations. His wife would have the child.”
“It’s not just about looking at poetry in book form, either: Reconnaissance investigates all kinds of poetic structure, all methods of delivery, all wellsprings of influence, and all facets of life’s intersections and investigations. Take, for example, a honeymooner’s opening of Paris like a flower: “The collection captures us:/pucker and blow of dizzying lips to trumpet/after trumpet, wet saxophone reeds; a slow trombone slithers and hands skim the wood torso/of an upright bass, leaving the bow behind/for the kinesthetics of the body.”
“Byron. Shelley. Paris. Nawrocki. Evocative image-trackers, succinct capturers of atmosphere, and now, in Reconnaissance, poets enjoying a series of interconnected lives and purposes. Drink deeply: this free verse wellspring is vivid and thought-provoking and quenches the thirst for inspiration.”
We’re gearing up for April—National Poetry Month—here is a preview from Reconnaissance by Amy Nawrocki. In her latest collection, Amy plays voyeur and thief, surveying canvases and investigating bookshelves, searching for creativity’s origins and exploring the nature of inspiration. The poems in Reconnaissance uncover muses between the frayed pages of Byron and Shelley, in Chagall’s stained glass, at Oscar Wilde’s grave, past the deep bogs of Glencoe, and in the far away snow caps of Mount Fuji. In these insightful and elegant poems, Nawrocki invites us to believe in “the authenticity of first sight.” Open the paint box and learn how to stare.
Memorize a few loose-leaf pages,
note important dates with precision. Mention
the children by name and explain the heritage
of the highboy in the parlor—cherry, late 18th century,
brass fixtures, replacements, not original.
Demonstrate the peculiar habits
of instruments placed with emphasis
around the house: pretend to fill
the tin-top foot warmers with hot coals,
mimic the dipping of candle wicks
in and out of their molds, smile coyly
as you tighten the rope mattress
with the antique bed key the way
someone would have two hundred years ago.
At times you recognize a twinge
of inaccuracy in the script, something
tinkering toward futility escaping
in your voice. And for a few minutes
as you watch visitors wave back
on their way to the car you wonder
if a pleasant tone and a few lucky cobwebs
are enough to recapture the history of a farmhouse
or of inhabitants who never seem to leave
enough behind. The past seems repetitive
until a blind man who need help placing
his feet up stone steps, bends into a prayer pose
and touches the floor’s pine planks
with both hands. Through the kitchen
and side bedrooms, past looms and the old
rocking horse, he feels his way and measures
distances with small steps. He knows
without being told that we’ve returned
to the front entrance, “where we started.”
Reconnaissance
Poems by Amy Nawrocki
ISBN: 978-1-938846-69-4 | 6×9 | 100pgs
Pre-Order Now | List Price: $14.95
This book will be released on April 7, 2015. Pre-order exclusively in our store and we will ship your order a full two weeks in advance!
Dick Allen, Connecticut State Poet Laureate and Professor Emeritus at the University of Bridgeport, is one of our greatest living poets. He has taught me much, even though I never knew him while he taught at UB. His work continually astounds me. He has read for UB’s Lecture Series, Necessary Voices, and at hundreds of other venues across the state. He is devoted to the arts and serves enthusiastically as the state’s laureate.
I’m honored that he took a sneak peak at Reconnaissance (to be released officially in April by Homebound Publications). Here’s what he said:
Poem by poem, year by year, Amy Nawrocki’s work has expanded in reach and confidence. Its fruition is here in her new collection, Reconnaissance—a wonder of seeing, painting, photographing, eavesdropping, thieving (“I stole van Gogh’s sadness and painted it on my shoulder”), spying, finding a way through a world that alternately stuns her, saddens her, delights her. Nawrocki is particularly in love with describing paintings and painters (in “Poem for Salvador Dali. . . ”, “I dreamt last night of a mustache”), with fitting past history to current life (“Toward a New Deal,” about the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C.), with jazz (“a slow / trombone slithers and hands skim the wood torso / of an upright bass, leaving the bow behind / for the kinesthetic of the body”), teaching writing (“Bless the first day of class”) and sometimes even whimsy (as in ”Ode to My Brain,” which begins “How you itch inside my skull. . . . Stop itching, you silly brain”). Most aptly named, Reconnaissance is a welcoming collection of excursions from the inner self to the outward presence. Nawrocki over and over convinces us that the observed and the felt—be it painting, place or person—forever clings to and changes the observer. A warm, rich, valuable and important collection. I most highly recommend it for buying, reading and rereading. What a pleasure it is to have followed this poet on her path to such true accomplishment.
Dick Allen is the author of This Shadowy Place: Poems and seven other prize-winning poetry volumes. Add Dick Allen to your library and help me thank him for his generous words. Order your copy of Reconnaissance today for early shipping from Homebound.
On the long way home from the bus stop,
kicked-up leaves gather in the trenches
along the side of the dirt road
pushed together by moving cars and people walking.
Overhead, camouflaged by their uniformity, birds
meander the sleek birches as a girl, goofy and marvelous,
ambles past the Wilson’s house and mica rock
making up characters and acting out moon stories.
In the earth’s penumbra, her circle of playmates
holds hands, not minding when the rain
discovers their marathon, hoping the cross winds,
full of tea parties and bittersweet chimes,
will sweep them away to the company of trees.
There is no sound like this ample baritone
which echoes a young girl’s thinking. In solitude
there is always singing, always voices
saturated and golden, sublime
waltzing through perfect shadows pianissimo.
This poem originally appeared in Lune de Miel, published by Finishing Line Press, 2012.
Mistral
Two battered boots wait
near the sloped steps that tilt
toward Vincent’s room in Arles.
On the back of a wobbly chair
hangs a solitary straw hat glimpsing
handprints thickly smeared
on the doorknob. Curled tubes
of cadmium spill the last beads
onto a dried palette, and a few
brushes soak in a tin bucket
of turpentine. In a frenzy,
flax, goldenrod, and chartreuse
pile onto canvases, sunflowers
left to dance in the dark melancholy
of the studio, petals falling from
the stretched linen as Vincent
storms into a black and starry night.
This poem first appeared in Potato Eaters, published by Finishing Line Press in 2008.
Tissue
On the nights she went out
to PTA meetings and Tupperware parties,
my mother would leave
a pressed ruby imprint of lips
on a square of toilet paper.
Pirating treasure-kisses
left on the counter,
by the time I was fourteen,
I had hundreds saved
in her crimson pump shoe-box
under my bed. Weighed down slightly
by a perfume bottle, those kisses
were left for me to find,
until I grew out of snug, cotton dresses.
Now, my best moments recreate
those toilet-tissue touches,
those sanguine emblems,
of beauty, and generosity,
those most sacred tokens
of any world.
From Nomad’s End, published by Finishing Line Press, 2010
Learning to Be Drown Proof
Snatching a breath,
filling lungs and veins
with salt and memories,
holding it, I submerge
the whole of me under.
For hours I will do this:
hands sculling the water, legs
dancing, still attached
at the place of my hip.
The scene around me disappears and
I am in Naxos again
and it is harvest time.
Each tree selects its best and blackest olive.
I hold in the cup of my hand
the pages of my life, dog-eared,
wet from too much handling
and the long swim.
I turn to page one,
and the first phrase I learned, loving
the underdeveloped syllables, naming
the things I know: tooth, burden,
heart. I am myself, I say.
My body holds its shape
in the whirling pool of water,
now at the point of yielding,
a tree earning its rings.
The latest issue of the Wayfarer offers a number of interesting, contemplative pieces including writing from Jamie K. Reaser, Jason Kirkley, and Theodore Richards. The featured artist is Jena Leake and you’ll find an interview with Byron Metcalf.The new feature The Return Journey offers book reviewsby Eric D. Lehman. This month he tells readers about the classic TheSnow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen.
Reconnaissance, my newest poetry collection, will be released by Homebound Publications in April. Here is an advanced review by the exceptional poet John Surowiecki:
Looking out a train window, Randall Jarrell saw “the chairs and tables of the world.” The view from Amy Nawrocki’s metaphorical window — and the stuff of her latest book, Reconnaissance — is art, all kinds of art: Rothkos, Sargents, Dalis, tattoos, jazz records, Anaïs Nin, an old copy of Shelley, a statue of FDR. But while the subject matter is certainly interesting, even fascinating, it is Nawrocki’s clear, witty, gem-cut style that’s the book’s real subject. In these poems, a bonsai tree “pretends toward age,” the artwork of Sol Lewitt resists “tremors of an inexact hand,” an X-ray reveals “one of van Gogh’s sunflowers dying inside me, just beneath my ribs.” These are exquisite poems, but not rarified and frail, not afraid of the rougher light of ordinary day. Two poems,“Cimetìere du Père Lachaise” and “The man sitting next to me is reading The Idiot” are alone worth the price of admission. But it’s an elegant, wonderful book, cover to cover.
Click John’s name to find his webpage and link to his works. He’s an amazing poet and I’m honored that he liked my work. I met him at UB’s Necessary Voices lecture where he read his work.
Amy Nawrocki 