Ceremonies of the Spirit

Wendy Brown-Báez writes in the heat from ecstatic love, loss, Mexico, and New Mexico. She has the poetry muscles and music for this harsh calling. Quemado, Qué madre! These poems are very powerful! Joan Logghe, Founder of Write Action writing workshop and author of Twenty Years in Bed with the Same Man, Blessed Resistance, Sofia, and Rice It's hot and humid at 4:30 am in New York and I can't sleep, I turn to my in-box. There is news of a friend's child just born and with another click news of a book being born as well. It brings back an image of a poet performing a poem in New Mexico years ago, she wrapped herself in a shawl and spoke of falling in love in the Middle East. You're holding the book in your hands and in the magic way of words and stories, you're holding that baby as well. That's what Wendy does, she connects us with words and wraps us in the safety of a shawl so we can fall in love with poetry once again. Gary Glazner, Founder of the Alzheimer's Poetry Project Ceremonies of the Spirit takes us on a journey from surrendering the things-and people-we love, to being transformed as a result of that process. The poems in this collection are rich with images that leave us feeling both the pain of tears cupped "to the heart like a string of pearls" and the wonder of transformation like the "dancer somersaulting against the window pane." These emotionally-charged poems remind us what it's like to be human. John Medeiros, recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board and Jerome Foundation Grants and co-curator of the GLBT Reading Series of Intermedia Arts in MN