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True Light Falls in Many Forms / Kathie Giorgio
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40 pages, poetry chapbook, $11 cover price
KATHIE GIORGIO’S fifth book, Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories of Kathie Giorgio, a collection of Giorgio’s stories previously published in literary magazines, will be released by the Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Giorgio’s first poetry chapbook, True Light Falls In Many Forms, will also be released in 2016. Giorgio’s novel, Rise From The River, was released by MSR on April 1, 2015 and debuted at Carroll University, where Kathie was serving as Visiting Author. River was on several “Must-read” lists during the summer of 2015. Her first three books, two novels, The Home For Wayward Clocks and Learning To Tell (A Life)Time, and a short story collection, Enlarged Hearts, were also released by MSR. Clocks received the Outstanding Achievement award by the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Awards Committee and was nominated for the Paterson Fiction Award. Lifetime, the sequel to Clocks, debuted to a standing-room only audience at the 2013 Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books, where Kathie was the welcoming Keynote. Hearts was selected as one of the 99 Summer Must-Reads by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2012.
Giorgio’s short stories and poems have appeared in over 100 literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner, Fiction International, and Harpur Palate, and in many anthologies. Her short story, “Half-Dressed”, published in Deep Water Literary Magazine, was nominated for the 2014 Write Well Award, sponsored by the Silver Pen Writers Association. She’s been nominated for the Million Writer Award and for the Best of the Net anthology and has been interviewed for articles in Poets & Writers magazine. She is the director and founder of AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop, an international creative writing studio.
In her poetry chapbook, True Light Falls in Many Forms, Kathie Giorgio captures light in what it reveals and in what it hides, moves the reader from twilight to dawn. In “Day One of Creative Writing Camp,” “… surrounded by five frilly girls…’ shadows of the poet’s past flicker in that space between early teen innocence and what the poet knows, “…an underlying vein of joy that I rarely/admit to./But I still remember.” It’s in Giorgio’s eye for detail, the i’s dotted with smiley faces, that we see her young poets’ playfulness, hear their giggles so we all remember. And in the end, see how five little girls remind the poet what it means to write. A deep Wisconsin winter casts its own shadows, but with Giorgio’s SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) lights, vivid imagery and keen humor, dawn arrives in a convertible “With the Top Down” as the poet “…raises [her] face to drink in the yellow heat. That drenching light.” That drenching light filtering throughout this debut collection leaves this reader willing to ride shotgun wherever the poet wants to go. —Kim Blum Hyclak
DAY ONE OF CREATIVE WRITING CAMP (MONDAY)
During the week that I turn 49
I am surrounded by five frilly girls
4 with L-full names and one odd duck
Callie, Kelly, Lily, Alyssa
And Hunter.
3 are 14
2 are 13
I am surrounded by 10 oblivious breasts
5 sing-song voices
lacy long hair and
a million expectations.
Their eyes are misty
and mine are too.
I remember this.
Giddy trust.
Absolute faith.
Open hearts.
And an underlying vein of anger at all
that is unfair.
I remember and wonder.
When did my mist turn pearl
instead of purple and pink and
polka dots and zebra stripes?
Trust? Please.
Faith? Not hardly.
Heart? Still beating.
And an underlying vein of joy that I rarely
admit to.
But I still remember.
And on Wednesday, when I turn 49
I will work at remembering harder.
SAD LIGHTS
(seasonal affective disorder)
Sitting under the SAD lights
I think about a flashlight splitting
a blackout, or flickering a tent in
the middle of the woods or taking
the scare out of a basement.
Just what do I have against darkness?
It brings pillows and flannel sheets
Stillness and chenille blankets
Crickets trapped in a sound machine jar
The end of one day, the void
before another
And dreams. Ushered in by the darkness
of my own closed eyes.
At night, I close the shutters against
the dark, but also against the moon’s silver
grace.
Okay, really, to keep the Walgreens security light
from spooning me, jaundicing my skin.
Give me some poetic license, some
lettered sad light magic of my own.
The moon never reaches my bedroom window.
So in my bed, I block light, and descend
to sleep’s basement.
Sitting under the SAD lights, I drink good
coffee, laced with cardamom and clove, and
watch the outside air change from
black to static gray to the spring blue of winter sky.
Shadow-dappled snow.
And I wonder why I can’t find happiness in
transitions, but crave the sudden shock of
light scraping away darkness like ribbons of
ice on a windshield.
Like a flashlight in a blackout or a tent or
a basement. A flashlight aimed at
my own closed eyes.
WITH THE TOP DOWN
(Say Goodbye To SAD Lights!)
Blur of greening trees and marble sky
the brown of the river twining like the chosen
fork in that Frost poem. No frost here.
The sun is a bath of light that
leaves me reeling.
Wheeling.
The air is snap-ribbon
glistening in the sudden upshots of
Spring.
I am driving topless.
In the jungle, animals gather at the
waterhole, dip their heads down, drink
in the wet. Take it in.
Oh, deep Satisfy.
In the car, I gather myself together
after a too-long winter.
Raise my face up, drink
the yellow heat. That drenching light.
Take it in.
Oh, yeah, baby.
Deep Satisfy.