Full Moon Midnight - Belinda Subraman

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Résumé :
from the author: The book is putting my current life in perspective beginning with Covid/Trump/Ukraine war times, looking back through relationships in my life, then forward in metaphysical/philosophical ways to my inevitable end, a sort of dance with death. Full Moon Midnight means it's late and time is running out but there's still light and an awesome beauty in the cycle of life. There is a rare delicacy, a fragility, a soft tenderness in the poems of Belinda Subraman's FULL MOON MIDNIGHT that is seldom seen in a book of verse. Each poem is a translucent pale yellow petal on a Texas rainbow cactus flower. But don't be fooled. Belinda Subraman's poems are also lightning and thunder, a storm of words filled with suffering, ecstasy, and release. FULL MOON MIDNIGHT faces the brutal and the mundane and transmutes all the pain into a new book of revelation. FULL MOON MIDNIGHT is an unanticipated but so welcome master work from the brilliant Belinda Subraman. -Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate In this new collection of poems, you can sense how Belinda has evolved and conquered an even more powerful expression. At times her poems are like paintings or photos. Other poems give life to her skills of playing with words, playing with rhythm and rhymes in a skillful manner, yet constantly with something urgent to tell the reader. Some poems are timeless while others delve into the present with its dark and foreboding clouds of war and massmurder. Others are very personal and intense where time and decay have their say. Her poems can be about being alone in the woods as a small child or about a bitter mother being hard on her. But there is no bitterness here, the joy of nature shines through. Although death, as it should, plays its part.-Bengt O Bj?rklund, Swedish Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate Reading FULL MOON MIDNIGHT by Belinda Subraman is like going on a vast, exciting journey through everything, each topic fully explored by an observant, discerning poet seeking deeper awareness, deeper consciousness, better answers. No subject is left out in this wide-ranging collection. We find insomnia, writer's block, war, mass shooters, activism, abusive mothers, false religion, the earth, meditation, zen, science, death, loss, eternity. Subraman is activist, lover, daughter, wife, historian, aesthetic observer/philosopher. Each poem is a pearl, finely created as in this excerpt from one of my many favorites, Infinite Mollusk: A chambered nautilus/breathing water/exhibits mastery of life/tentacles sensing/fingers in the waves/pointing nowhere//everywhere//the inclusive mind/is love in action//the mind creates the abyss/the heart crosses it. And again in The Answer: I see it now in everything I do -/A hazy hint of enlightenment -/In my handwriting, my painting,/The fizzy vibrations -/Atoms dancing infinitely/In the all encompassing unnameable bliss. I am so impressed with this beautiful work by a poet dedicated to words, knowledge, deep understanding. This is the kind of book that makes me realize how much I love poetry. I found myself reading each poem again and again, hoping that, with the poet, I would find some answers. What better experience from a book of poems? -Susan Ward Mickelberry, author of And Blackberries Grew Wild