CECILIA WOLOCH

Cecilia Woloch's new book Narcissus recently won the Snowbound Series Chapbook Award and was published by Tupelo Press. In her chapbook Cecilia combines brief lyrics and prose poems to talk about what love means to lovers who have seen love spent and wasted, lovers who know what the world does to love and still trust in it.

Here's one of the prose poems from Narcissus:

POSTCARD TO MYSELF FROM THE LOWER CARPATHIANS, SPRING

I slept in a room filled with white moths.- In a wooden house in the lower Carpathians —Beskid Niski — each silvery night. I made my bed in the room’s far corner, white moths settling like quiet petals on every surface as evening fell. They folded their wings and clung to the walls without a quiver as I undressed. I knew, as soon as I switched off the lamp, that the air would go pale with their fluttering. I knew, in my sleep, one might light on my arm, on my cheek, in my hair, without waking me. In this room, also, the seeds of wildflowers gleaned from the meadows were spread out to dry. What I learned about gentleness then. What I learned to be gently less wary of. I want not to forget those nights in the lower Carpathians, deep spring, sleeping alone: the white moths swirling as I dreamt; the meadows baring themselves to the moon.

________________________________________

There are several more poems from the chapbook at the Tupelo site. In addition, "Anniversary," one of the other poems in the chapbook, was recently chosen as the poem of the month by Writers at Work. To read the poem, click on Writers at Work and then click on June's Poem of the Month.

The photo of Cecilia was taken by Jim Baker Hall.