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One soul's journey to self discovery
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Reviews for "Tough Enough and Distant Traveler"
Reviewed by Ofira Sephiroth
4/27/2009
Tough Enough, the first book of poetry and flash fiction by C. R. Stone, consists of eight sections with 83 poems organized in the first seven sections - Silent Inspirations, Memorial Reflections, My Little Haikus, Acrostics, Conflictions, Romance, Desire and Heartbreak and Poems for Inspiring.
I instantly embraced natures' glory while reading the Silent Inspirations section. Oxygen, a poem full of beauty, captures the essence of nature as a healing force in one's life.
"Such beauty the landscape painted before me.
A carefully crafted palette of techniques
Sprinkled abroad on everlasting canvas
Applauded by seasonal winds."
But Tough Enough is not a poetry book that only consists of natures' beauty but also showcases the darker side. The Conflictions section consists of poems of a darker nature. The poem Changes is a metaphoric garden of pain and loss.
"My silence is a fading flower.
Quietness hangs like the pink blossoms
on the Amaryllis belladonna bulbs growing
in the rock garden below your window -
they feel my pain."
Man's nature is also taken into consideration within these pages. Condemned compares vengeance to the more disastrous side of nature.
"Bilious vapors hover
While you habituate to misery.
Old memories, faded.
Rainbow desires, paled.
Clouds of bitterness rain
Blood while you follow death.
You'll never see the light
In a haze of vengeance."
The final section of Tough Enough consists of 11 pieces of flash fiction, touching on various topics - love, loss, revenge, deception. Stone bridges the gap between natures' beauty and man's devastating plea for mother earth's healing power.
Thought-provoking, emotional, romantic and sometimes painful - all these words can be used to describe man's journey though life. In the midst of all the troubles and heartache, Tough Enough dares to prove that one constant beauty is still left in this world - Nature.
"Nature
Innocent, free,
Growing, singing, resting
Each season spawns a magical
portrait."
Questions, unquestioned discoveries, and answers in parable and rhyme…. This collection records a journey starting with a 1960s retrospective and the first man on the moon, moving to a new millennium welcomed in with a terrorist spin, family crises,
The songs and art in this book are about our collective emergence after the pandemic and trauma of the last few years - comprised of 5 collections: World as Refuge, Where We Live, In Our Hands, Rhythms of Change and What We See & Sow.
