Poetry reading & book signing

june 10 at 6:30 p.m.  SOMOS

carol Alena Aronoff & betsie Miller-kusz

“Dreaming Earth’s Body is a remarkable collaboration that seems to spring from a single consciousness. Carol Alena Aronoff’s poems evoke the spirit of nature as well as the personal inner spirit. She reflects deeply on the nature of everyday experience and the transformative opportunities offered by listening to and acknowledging Gaia. The text is spare and direct, yet lyrical in its perfect descriptive beauty. Betsie Miller-Kusz’s stunning paintings are powerful visual evocations of Earth’s beneficence and beauty. They form a kind of narrative cycle that reveals itself simultaneously with the text. These powerful symbols of the female spirit inspire the same awe and appreciation for natural life and its healing potential that Aronoff’s poems provoke. This work of devotion, so clearly offered as a gift to the reader, is one that I will open with anticipation again and again”. ––––William Torphy, poet, author, art critic, curator

“It is rare to discover a work of such exquisite imagery, both in its poems and its photographs. Nothing escapes this poet’s eye: Day is a perfumed meadow with ‘violet starbursts,’ early light as ‘morning prayer,’ even the ‘speak of crickets and worm songs.’ Night reveals ‘stars in the basket of sky’ and the moon transformed into a ‘ewe’s horn.’ One can only dream of becoming lost in Dr. Aronoff’s lush landscape of meditation, healing, and, ultimately, grace”.—Andrea L. Watson, co-editor, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined and Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai

“The real blessing is Aronoff’s synthesis of exquisite photographs with the simple yet meaningful imagery of nature, rain, sky, vegetation, ocean—all the same subjects that make Merwin’s poetry so profound. But I wouldn’t expect anything less from someone who sees certainty in a tide pool, an empty bowl as an open door. Prepare to discover new worlds! This is her best volume yet — stunning!”—Scott Wiggerman, author of Vegetables and Other Relationships, Leaf and Beak:Sonnets