Bianca Stone

Belief

The briar patch where I was born is flowering.
A stone path leads to the brook.
Hummingbirds find the greensward’s stargazer lilies,
their sepals open like the intimate eye of belief.

Yes, I would.
I would repeat this life.

I loved the unexpected imagery in these poems. An overcoat flapping open like a hospital gown. Fall “staggering on”, as if “beautiful and stung from battle.” Being “run through by feeling as if by a bayonet.” The references to Greek myths, poets, artists, show more music, philosophers.

What’s Poetry Like describes a young man asking about a book of poetry, what poetry was like, something that can’t be explained. So, she gives him the book, later imagining the book “waiting to be opened, waiting to torment him, thinking of it changing his life.” And, of course, poetry has that ability to change your life.

The Translation Elegies references Rilke, attempting “to articulate the question of why the innocent suffer, why we cannot gain our innocence back.”

Thoughts at the Grave considers Rodin: “Even Rodin must have sensed it. How when a face emerged out of nothing in his obsessive work, that what was hidden was lost in the stone, once it was carved into something.”

Civilization and Its Discontents caught me: I have two apple trees and wasps on the group. I adopted a dog no one wanted. I used to blow bubbles for our son to chase. The poem shifts to the recollection of a line written a decade ago. “When you write you try and make sure it’s ready before you serve it”, she writes, “I want to get it not right but near.” Near is all we can expect, anyway, as we put feelings into words. But near is more than good enough.

There are disturbing questions asked, the “death instinct” desiring to return “to the old state of things, the first stoney lifeless form we held, how we live merely a circuitous path towards inertia,” the “letting go.”

But in Belief, the startling acceptance of life’s beauty is enough to affirm, “I would repeat this life.”

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less

I have no idea how to fairly late this picture book that’s based on Gertrude Stein’s poem “A Little Called Pauline” from her 1914 book of poetry, Tender Buttons. The short poem is incomprehensible to most adults. No child can understand it. On the other hand, I give poet-artist Bianca Stone gets an “A” for effort for doing her best to turn this enigma of a poem into a picture book. The illustrations will delight any child, and the book “tells” a story through the pictures show more even if the target child cannot understand the poem at all. Which they won’t.

So, I’m giving Stone a five for effort and illustrations, balanced by a one for Stein’s accessibility. That leads to a compromise three stars.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Penny Candy Books in exchange for an honest review. show less

A wonderfully introspective, spiritual poet. Especially enjoyed On The Nature of Things.

Her poetry is extraordinary, breathtaking. Each poem has some line or phrase that stops you dead in your tracks and leaves you with wonderment. The deep spiritual nature of these poems are something to feel blessed with.