Description
- Kind: Perfectbound
- Pages: 94
- Language: English
- Date Published: June 2016
- ISBN: 978-1-939929-55-6
Praise for Eyewitness
The passionate imagery of Eyewitness offers us no less than the seasonal rounds of a long life, in beautifully crafted poems animated by the kaleidoscope of memory. Turning from grief to joy and back again, these intense and skillful poems transform the ordinary into dazzling, ever-shifting shapes. Natalie Safir’s latest book reminds me of a stunning sunset whose colors captivate the eye, until the inevitable darkening. —Lynne Sharon Schwartz
With precision and rue, these poems bear witness to a lost world, the wounds still fresh, the tenderness undiminished. In a delta where landscape, body and dreams converge, consolation is sought and bittersweet wisdom found. —Phillip Lopate
These are marvelous poems, written by a mature woman who has lived life, and who, in examining the details of her past and present, uncovers mystery. I praise the wit, the unwavering eye of a serious intellect in touch with the tragic as well as the comic. This is a necessary book for all who love poetry and share the quest for insight into our individual lives. I urge you to read it. —Abigail Thomas
Excerpt From Eyewitness
L’Arlésienne
after a painting by Vincent Van Gogh
Seated at this table,
vivid daydreams arrive
like waterfalls in a desert
and I have no choice
but to muse on love.
I have been captured
by the folio before me,
its tattered blue pages a water ride
in a dory we rowed into twilight,
the gyre of your rugged forearms
promising me pleasure.
These tattered pages
hold fragile letters
stuffed between the leaves,
my open handwriting
leaping excitedly across borders,
my ardent script frightened
of its message.
Ah love, how I draped
your scarlet around me
more fervently than a flag,
how your wide stance
framed every threshold
forcing out forest wolves
gathering I would not hear.
About the Author
Natalie Safir’s long career in poetry includes editing, lecturing, publishing poems in numerous literary journals, running a long-term reading series, teaching private as well as public writing workshops in local institutions, and authoring five collections of poems. Her poem “Matisse’s Dance” has been anthologized in college texts by The McGraw Hill Co. and in Art & Artists, Everyman edition, Knopf, 2012. Her Jungian fairytale, “The Woman with Midnight Hair” was published in 2010. She taught memoir workshops at a local senior center and currently runs “Stories I Tell My Friends” at the Warner Library in Tarrytown.
Residing in Tarrytown, NY, she is a certified empowerment coach practicing Dreamwork.
