Have you ever loved, been loved, been confused about love, or suffered from loss of love? All these feelings have been captured and shared in the words of heartfelt poems, compiled over many years by a former teacher and award-winning author. The variety of lyrical poetry forms include free verse, blank verse, haiku, & sonnets
From acclaimed children’s author Sherrill S.
Cannon comes a wondrous new book of poetry, all
about the many forms of love. In poetic terms, she
speaks of beauty, nature, sadness, and gladness, her
soothing words offering an uplifting message to
readers everywhere.
These heartfelt poems were compiled over many
years by the former teacher and award-winning
author. “As a teacher, I used poetry to help counsel
many troubled teens and friends, and have continued
this pattern throughout the years,” she says.
In her poem “History,” she writes:
I do not think what might have been –
Through life, we’ve taken different paths.
We broke apart our hearts back then
To follow dreams we thought would last.
But now our paths have crossed once more,
It seems we’ve never been apart –
I knew when you walked through the door,
I’d found my missing piece of heart.
Excerpt
I do not think what might have been –
Through life, we’ve taken different paths.
We broke apart our hearts back then
To follow dreams we thought would last.
But now our paths have crossed once more,
It seems we’ve never been apart –
I knew when you walked through the door,
I’d found my missing piece of heart.
Professional Reviews
Reader Views by Susan Violante
Reviewed by Susan Violante for Reader Views (01/18)
“A Penny for Your Thoughts” by Sherrill S. Cannon is a compilation of poems in different forms. I have seen and loved the author’s work in children rhymes, so was eager to explore this new side of Sherrill Cannon’s writing.
The content of this book reflects feelings which we all might have encountered on different occasions and within different stage of our lives. Cannon organized her poems in three major groups that encases feelings of ‘Heads – Love and Friendship,’ ‘Spinning – Of Related Emotions,’ and ‘Tails – of Heartache and Anguish.’ At the same time it represents the flight of a tossed penny.
In my opinion the tossed penny represents the randomness of our feelings in a life time. I found all forms of verse, sonnets and play words awesome, and truly loved her rhymes. The messages within her words were not only deep; they are so relatable to anyone. Although I can’t really pick a favorite as I loved all of them, there was one that touched me to my core. I quote it below as I believe it to be the perfect example of the author’s skill of expressing complex deep messages, while making them feel natural, harmonious and simple:
‘OLD WOMAN
Life sketches echoes of the past
Across her face: lines around her eyes
And mouth, furrows on her forehead – cast
In permanent parchment. The creases so disguise
The woman still inside, no one can see
The little child or lovely maid within.
The mind that looks on life so eagerly
Is hidden by the wrinkles of the skin.
For what is youth, but just a state of mind -
A way to look on life – to stay aware?
And who can say what love that one could find,
If one could know the person hidden there;
The youthful laughing girl who lives inside…
And cannot understand why she’s denied.’
Overall, “A Penny for Your Thoughts” by Sherrill S. Cannon is a remarkable, inspiring compilation of thoughts and poems which will captivate all type of readers as they relate deeply with the simple life messages and heartfelt feelings shared by the author. It is a five star little book that will touch the person within, and one I will surely re-visit and share over and over again.
Feathered Quill by Anita Lock
Award-winning author Sherrill Cannon has a knack for turning feelings into words in her latest book of poems on love and loss.
Cannon’s newest has been a long time in the making. A collection of one hundred plus poems geared for a wide range of ages (middle school on) who have experienced the joys and sorrows associated with love, Cannon’s writing reflects many, many years of creativity that didn’t just pile up in notebooks. According to her website, the former teacher applied her gift of wordsmithing to help others: "As a teacher, I used poetry to help counsel many troubled teens and friends, and have continued this pattern throughout the years."
Now in book form, and appropriately divided into three poignant sections, Cannon invites readers to embrace her words of wisdom through this marvelous journey called life.
Subtitled Poems of Love and Loss (Feelings Into Words), Cannon goes a step further by adding Coin Toss? in her Table of Contents. Each carefully weighed section—Heads...Of Love and Friendship; Spinning—Of Related Emotions; and Tails...of Heartache and Anguish—begins to make sense...one poem at a time.
Keeping largely but not exclusively to first-person narrative, her first section centers on light issues, such as friends, lovers, parent and child relationships, God, music, and even the beloved Teddy Bear. But as she moves on to sections two and three, the timbre slowly darkens into areas of loss, such as loved ones moving away and death.
Cannon’s assortment of mellifluous poetry, many sprinkled with puns, is replete with free verse, blank verse, couplets, simple 4-line rhymes, alternating rhymes, quatrains, haiku, and concrete poems, just to name a few. Amid the bulk of Cannon’s work, though, are sonnets.
While the various poetic forms in A Penny for Your Thoughts do admirably to translate “feelings into words,” Cannon capitalizes upon her love theme by using a potent structure to verbalize this amorous mien: the Shakespearean sonnet.
Audiences familiar with The Bard’s works will immediately recognize how Cannon effectively captures the varied expressions of this commanding yet fickled four-letter word that is known as “love.” Perfect examples of the Shakespearean sonnet include “Music,” “Sonnet to Friendship,” and “The Road.”
(From “Music”)
“Stop and hear the music in your life— A melody for you to sing along; For it will soothe your heart and ease your strife. If you would only listen to its song...”
Second to the Shakespearean sonnet usage is the Petrarchan. Examples include “A Memory,” “Tentative,” and “The Transplant.”
(From “Transplant”)
“It really wasn’t very long ago, My plant was set into this strange new ground Where everything was different. But it found That even in new sunlight, it could grow...”
There is no vulgarity. Every word spoken is straightforward, intentional, and from the heart. If the reader follows judiciously, he/she will discover that the poems provide plenty to ruminate on and are very therapeutic for those who have unresolved conflict.
Quill says: A Penny for Your Thoughts is so much more than another compilation of poems; it is indeed a book of healing.
Readers Favorite by Sarah Stuart
A Penny for Your Thoughts by Sherrill S. Cannon is a collection of one hundred and fifty-four poems on the theme of the many and varied aspects of love. Beautifully illustrated with black, grey and white sketches by KJ of Kalpart, Ms. Cannon explores love and friendship, related emotions, and heartache and anguish. The three sections comprise very different views of the title subject. Love and Friendship includes A Sign, a poem about the promise of spring. Related Emotions embraces work still more diverse, appealing to children, adult lovers, and citizens of an unenlightened world. Heartache and Anguish: cold, chill, barren, loss, tears, holocaust, and death. A Penny for Your Thoughts will appeal strongly to those who venture into reading poetry for the first time.
Sherrill S. Cannon’s poetry is mainly freestyle, but the contribution I found most intriguing and unexpected were the haikus. There is one called Autumn to be found in the Related Emotions section, and another entitled Grief towards the end. Fall, amongst the Heart and Anguish collection, is the cleverest, literally falling from “The geese are flying South again” to “S”, the point at the bottom of gradually shortening lines. Every reader will have their own favourites. Mine are A Poet’s Photograph, and Forever Love, which is appropriately in the last section; it is a heart-breaker that compares love to a butterfly, delicate and easily destroyed. A Penny for Your Thoughts is a true coffee-table book; it has a poem somewhere within it for everyone.
(Self-published. Please contact author directly to order.)
Enter the pages of diaspora in quiet introspection. Bathe your thoughts with subtle humor; synchronize your spirit-sense with history-in-heat; fall headlong with eyes wide open into
