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Marie Harris

writer, poet, voice

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Desire Lines

By Marie Harris

Desire Lines
New Poems
$18.00
  • Publisher: Hobblebush Books
  • Editor: Sidney Hall, Rodger Martin
  • Edition: first edition
  • Available in: Paperback
  • ISBN: 978-1-939449-20-7
  • Published: December 31, 2019
Hobblebush Books Granite State Poetry SeriesOrder from Gibson's BookstoreOrder from Water Street Bookstore

New Poems: 2000-2019  Includes occasional poems written when I served as NH Poet Laureate (1999-2004), as well as other commissions. Love poems, poems of the sea and sky. Long poem after an accident. Cover painting by Marina Forstmann Day. Interior images by Charter Weeks.

 

In masterful and compelling poems, Harris vivifies each “flicker and flash” of petrels, terns, gulls, cowbirds, and ospreys that serve as omens or signs of life’s offerings and tragedies. Regardless of whether she is reflecting on the loss of a friend, past experiences aboard a schooner, the challenges of being engulfed in a fog, or the horrific accident of a son and his family, she transports the reader into a world of wisdom. Gaining comfort from a devoted spouse, Harris relives the paths of her life in insightful and skillfully rendered narrative accounts that both enlighten and encourage her to move on.

—Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Virginia Poet Laureate Emerita

Like birds perched briefly on trees, the poems in Desire Lines balance stillness and movement, arrival and departure. This is a book of journeying able to hold apparent contradictions: Did my father teach me that boats were not built to end up somewhere?…Every setting out is really a leaving behind. Every landfall a strange disappointment. The speaker is a careful observer of nature, yet her descriptions are rooted in human activity. A kingfisher rattles back and forth…like someone’s lawnmower striping a verge and a porthole frames a bleacher of gulls/on shore hunched/waiting it out like loyal fans. Tender and wrenching, the long sequence, ”Bruised Hearts,” powerfully details a son’s recovery from a near fatal accident and moves between poems responding to her son’s suffering and letters written to herself as a young mother filled with the guilt and recriminations every mother suffers. Likewise, the delicate, restrained poems of the title section, “Desire Lines,” reveal the way a long lasting love comforts while simultaneously rendering us vulnerable to its loss as when lying next to her beloved the speaker muses: I will die your breath seemed to say, and you will be sad. Despite its often elegiac tone, this collection promises fresh purpose will emerge assuredly/as snowdrops elbowing the frozen ground. Understated and courageous, these are poems to sustain us.

–Kathleen Aguero,  AFTER THAT


Tagged with: birding, desire lines, Granite State Poetry Series, love poems, nh poet laureate, poet laureate, Poetry, sailing

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A Poet for Your Bookshelf, Classroom, or Library

Avatar photoWelcome! Come on in and browse through my books of poetry, anthologies I’ve edited and in which my poems appear, and some essays and articles on subjects ranging from blue water sailing to New England farm stays to birding. You can also find photos of my collaborations with painters, sculptors, photographers and musicians. Listen to audio clips of a sampling of my voiceover work.

As a poet, I perform and teach at colleges & universities throughout the country, and in residencies in elementary and high schools, libraries, writers’ workshops and retreats, and senior centers. Read More…

Words in Progress

Walking Song

WALKING SONG …reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that even if she got a sunstroke and went mad the rest of the world would go […]

My Brother is Gone from Us

Basil Harris (pictured with sister Anne, summer 2016) He died today. Farewell, sweet singer.

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