She Wore Emerald
Then
Reflections
on Motherhood
By Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson
with photography by May
Lattanzio
Moods of Motherhood: thirty poems by award-winning poets Magdalena Ball
and Carolyn Howard-Johnson, with original photography by May Lattanzio.
A beautifully presented, tender and strikingly original gift book, ideal for
Mother's Day or any day when you want to celebrate the notion of
motherhood in its broadest sense. Share this collection with someone you love.
Purchase an electronic copy of She Wore Emerald Then for only $2 (less than the cost of a card)
Or a beautiful hardcopy with full color interior
For media enquiries or review copies, please contact
Carolyn Howard Johnson at HOJONEWS@aol.com, or Magdalena Ball at maggieball@compulsivereader.com
AWARDS
She Wore Emerald Than received honourable mention in the Military Writers
Society of America’s 2010 Poetry Book of the Year Awards
She Wore Emerald Than has been
named a finalist in the USA Book News 2009 NBBA Best Book Awards!
She Wore Emerald Then named as
2009 top ten read at MyShelf.com by Jennifer Akers.
Sample Poems
Mother’s Bed
Listen to the author: http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/images/Mother's
Bed.mp3
by Magdalena Ball
In the restless
night
when mortality
lurks in every shadow
the blanket
won’t cover your fear
and morning is
a half-forgotten dream
vague and
uncertain,
slink into my
bed
the pillow
holds a mother’s secret
whispered charm
you can sink
your head into.
There are no
demons here;
no whirlwind of
memory and anticipation clouding
sleep
only eternal
warmth
a shared space
free from the
ticking illusion
of time,
motion, and change.
Here, where you
are always welcome
nothing matters
except this
peace
this place
containing
every possible now.
Could It Have Been
Otherwise?
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
At
eighty-eight, she (tired
of the
twenty first century
before it
has become school
age)
pleads, weary
before
dinner, eyes
too weak
to read.
I turn on
the TV,
grab a VCR
to cheer
her. I'm
too slow, way
too slow.
Instead of You're lookin’
swell,
Dolly, she is treated
to
Aulnay-sous-Bois'
streets
aflame, backlash,
ghetto or
banlieues
nothing
new
in new
millennium.
REVIEWS
"She
Wore Emerald Then is more than a collection of poems; it is a collection of
life. Each is poignantly written, taking the reader to the brink
of emotion as a memory long forgotten is evoked, only to resurrect another
time and place as the page is turned. Not only filled with beauty in its words,
She Wore Emerald Then is filled with the complexities and challenges life
visits upon us from conception to a last breath; a verbal and visual experience
from start to finish." --Jozette Aaron, editor of DeSilva's News
***
A book of finely cut gems to hold, admire, let their multi-facets flash their messages to mind, and the fine sharp edges of each plane hold the image indelibly. The poets take us either side of motherhood and all the pain and joy held in between. We visit, through Magdalena’s eyes, the arrival that makes a mother – the amazement, the awe, the juxtaposing of life’s simple statement ‘I am’ against the complexities of “The Genetic Code” that made the babe –
the organised complexity
of your extraordinary
beauty
couldn’t be simpler
as you reach a tentative
hand
towards the future
Then we are led by Carolyn, down the narrowing path to the final drawn out exit. The circle of life completes, the child is yet to know the mother, the mother has forgotten the child…
We all forget names, I say as numb
moves from hand to heart
because it is my name she has forgotten.
Gems sparkling here remind us of those seminal joys – the babe, the birth; other gems flash from the page and we recognise, whether we want to or no – the final pages turning to the close of one life’s book. -- J.R.McRae
***
"What relationship is more complex or more elemental than the mother-child bond? Abraham Lincoln said, 'All that I am or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.' Toni Morrison wrote, 'Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.'
Both
of those quotes, as well as one by Honore de Balzac at the beginning of SHE
WORE EMERALD THEN, perfectly describe this collection of poems by Carolyn
Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball---poetry that catches at your soul. Both of
them reprise their poems from Ball's QUARK SOUP, Howard-Johnson's TRACINGS, and
their joint collection, CHERISHED PULSE. Fans of CHERISHED PULSE will be
pleased to learn that the poets continue to write poems that don't sound either
like banal Hallmark cards or the bitter-at-dysfunctional-family jeremiads that
habitually torture MFA writing workshop participants.
The
two poets complement each other (with words accompanied by stunning photography
by May Lattanzio). The opus covers both the grand sweep of the birth of
all universal life and the private universe populated by only an adult daughter
watching her mother struggle to eat dinner and remembering how her mother
washed her one slip. While Ball explores the cosmic continuum and traces
us all back to the mother spark that set the stars burning, Howard-Johnson
concentrates her portraiture on the deeply personal. But Ball also talks about
the oxytocin haze of giving birth and her mother vomiting from cancer
drugs. To quote the last poem in the collection, 'Hallmark Couldn't Possibly
Get This Right.' When you read about the tough love of the universe or Ball's
sienna childhood photograph or Howard-Johnson's mother forgetting her name, you
want to cry and hug your mother (and your children, if you have them), because
they capture the eternal tug of war between joy and sorrow in the mother-child
bond."--Kristin Johnson, poet, author,
screenwriter and founder of the Poet Warrior Project, http://poetwarriorproject.blogspot.com
***
Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson (with photos by May Lattanzio) have joined forces to produce an intriguing look at mothers and motherhood in She Wore Emerald Then...This collection of poems offers some traditional scenes of mother / daughter relationships and others that are different and intriguing. --Willie Elliot, www.myshelf.com
***
"This is a collection of poetry that movingly illustrates many aspects of motherhood and, if you are a poetry lover, there is much that you will find appealing and thought-provoking. In the first half of the book, the poems by Magdalena Ball have a cosmic quality to them and some wonderful imagery. In the poem 'Coil of Life', for example, giving birth is described as the 'Big Bang' and in 'Assault by a Black Hole', the reader is taken on a journey from the sublime to the commonplace and you can't help but smile..." Helena Harper, Author, It's a Teacher's Life
About the authors and photographer
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. Her
short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide
number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and
international awards for poetry (including this year's Roland Robinson literary
award), and fiction. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Sleep Before Evening, a
nonfiction book The Art of Assessment: How to Review
Anything and two other poetry chapbooks Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn
Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse. She
runs a monthly radio program podcast www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This is the Place,
and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered
are both award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems appear in national
magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture, tolerance,
writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations
nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and has shared
her expertise at venues like San Diego State's world renowned Writers'
Conference, Dayton University's Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop and SPAN's (Small Publishers Association of North America)
annual conference. Carolyn was recently awarded Woman of the Year
in Arts and Entertainment by the California Legislature; her home town's Character
and Ethics Commission honored her for her work on promoting tolerance and
the Pasadena Weekly named her to their list of "San Gabriel Valley
women who make life happen" for literary activism. Her nitty-gritty how-to
book, The Frugal Book Promoter won USA Book News'
Best Professional Book 2004 and her chapbook of poetry, Tracings, was honored by
the Military
Writers' Society of America for excellence. It is now available
from Finishing
Line Press and Amazon. Her literary website is on part of
this site on this page: http://carolynhoward-johnson.com.
May Lattanzio is not a stereotypical grandmother. She is a freelance writer,
a poet, author, an animal and nature lover. When she first went digital ('cause
she couldn't use a viewfinder anymore), she took her camera out onto her acres
in NW Florida, concentrating on the many insects.
Her websites are: http://inkedin.ning.com/profile/Maziel
www.thelensflare.com/u_may.php, www.jpgmag.com/people/maziel.
http://maylattanzio.blogspot.com/