What is so evident in Laura Vookles is the ring of the 'quiet truth'.
What would be drums and trumpets in the hands of other poets becomes the
symphony of the understated in her hands. I do not mean that you will find
soft-strings sugaring-over sharp edges of grief; quite the opposite. In her
works grief is met in a quiet room. The discussion is civil. The sound you
hear is your heart breaking for her. There are not harsh lights in LV's work.
Still, her words do not give anything any place to hide.
—Ryk McIntyre, Poet, Dad, Cantab Lounge CoHost and Self-Appointed Unitarian Pope
This is a highly recommended collection any reader cannot fail to be moved by. For those of us who've tried to make ourselves heard through the barrier of death, reach someone who is gone, these poems will especially resonate.
—Linda Lerner, Author of 12 chapbooks including City Woman (March Street Press, 2006) and Living In Dangerous Times (Presa Press, 2007).
Click the Cover to Look Inside the Book!
(soft cover/17 pp.) $6.25 (+ $1.50 S&H)
Laura Vookles (a.k.a. LV) is chief curator at the Hudson River
Museum in Yonkers, NY, where she has worked for over 20 years. Her
most recent scholarly essay is featured in Westchester: the American
Suburb, co-published by the Hudson River Museum and Fordham
University Press. Her poetry has been included in two anthologies Look!
Up in the Sky! An Anthology of Comic Book Poetry (Sacred Fools Press),
HIS RIB: Stories, Poems & Essays by HER (Penmanship Books) and has
been published in Ballard Street Poetry Journal as well as online at
RogueScholars.com and November3rdClub.com. She writes memoir
about growing up in Memphis, her grandmothers, motherhood, her
husband's death and middle-aged romance. She has featured for the
Worcester Storytellers, the Poetry Asylum New Year's Prom, GotPoetry
Live, the louderARTS UPPERCASE series, The Back Fence, The
Brownstone Poets, among other venues. She won the first ever White
Plains Library Slam, joined the Westchester National Slam Poetry Team
and competed this past August [2007] in Austin, Texas.
John’s Karmann Ghia
Who knows what became of John’s
sun yellow Karmann Ghia?
Perhaps, as I imagined many times,
a gust of wind lifted the body,
joints weak from rust,
off that chassis and bore it heavenward?
Perhaps it did not truly exist
after it ceased to be his baby
and, languishing in another driveway,
the sun simply slipped past the horizon?
But that German coupe is never far from me
when I think of him. One in the same.
Vintage cool and showing its age.
James Dean of the museum staff parking lot.
I hate yellow cars but I made an exception.
Real chrome, with dents and scratches
to match a chiseled nose and
wayward bronze whiskers in a silver beard.
Smoky leather interior like his old bomber jacket.
Engine turning over like a biplane, more bark than bite.
Not a comfortable ride
but intriguing and exciting.
A car to put sex on the brain but no place to do it.
All pent up and screaming for attention,
while John pretended to keep a low profile,
Joy Division blaring in the wood workshop.
Unique like him, a relic in 1990.
I only ever saw one other on the road.
Robin’s egg or was it wide blue sky?—
looking for a yellow sun.
16
Laura Vookles recites her "1960 Baby" at Bowery Poetry Club, New Year's Day 2008
[Video Credit: Roxanne Hoffman, Poets Wear Prada]
Laura Vookles is an astonishing poet who rises from
life's heartwrenching path only to forge a bridge to
all our hearts through brilliant observation and the
witness of words. —Su Polo, Curator of the Saturn
Series Poetry Reading, NYC
If we consider that each poem is a gesture, and that
gesture may be turned inward, toward the poet's self,
or directed outward, toward an object or other, this
book becomes an opening of hands, an offering not just
to John, the direct beloved, but to each of us,
reading, a soft unfolding of palms insisting, “I have
many train stories, but this is yours.” —Marty
McConnell, member of the Piper Jane Project and
co-curator of louderARTS, NYC
Two of the hardest topics to write about are Love and
Loss. So many times they are written about superficially, lacking depth, context, or explanation
as to why it should be important to the reader. LV
manages to tread this territory with the skill of a
seasoned tour guide, covering the important
touchstones while pointing out small details that give
the larger picture depth. Even at its most emotionally
raw points, LV's poetry presents itself with a grace
and beauty rarely found when discussing such hefty
topics as Love and Loss. She manages to capture small
moments with the exacting eye of a war photographer,
leaving us with word pictures both gorgeous and
heartbreaking in their honesty. She also talks about
some cool cars. —Bill MacMillan, Founder of the
Worcester Poets' Asylum and member of the 1996
National Slam Champion team, Providence, R.I.
In “John on the Chrysler”, boundary-defying poet LV has
given us a powerful and modern elegy. Tenderly
cataloguing her late husband's life with clear and
thoughtful verse glittering with detail, LV allows us
to join her as she attempts to make sense out of what
is ultimately senseless -- the early death of a
husband and father. Heart-breaking yet resilient,
mournful yet hopeful, this collection may long for
what might have been, but it also shows a profound and
brave understanding of what is. It is testament to the
power of LV as a writer that one leaves this book – a
book so inextricably tied to death--with a grateful
sense of awe, wonder and triumph. —Cristin O'Keefe
Aptowicz, Founder & Host of Urbana Slam at NYC’s Bowery
Poetry Club
