{"id":365,"date":"2016-04-16T02:17:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T02:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/?page_id=365"},"modified":"2016-04-16T02:17:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T02:17:55","slug":"deeper-into-the-pond","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/?page_id=365","title":{"rendered":"Deeper Into the Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deeper Into the Pond<\/strong>
\nA Celebration of Femininity<\/strong>
\n by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson<\/strong>
\n Original artwork by Jacquie Schnell<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cVivid images\u2026will speak to you of times to look forward to or to remember. These are not poems to read once. They will stay with you forever.\u201d ~Nancy Famolari<\/p>\n

Click on the book cover to purchase a copy or for samples<\/strong><\/p>\n

Military Writers Society of America Bronze\u00a0Medal Award winner<\/p>\n

A few reviews<\/h2>\n

“This is a rich tapestry of a celebration.\u00a0It opens with Carolyn’s verse and a ballad of marine exotica and moves to the name bearing poem “Narcissus Revisited” which mirrors the suffocation of `progress’ that gives freedoms with one hand and takes with the other. Here the deadly oil slick wall kills as readily as any of glass – progressive killing –<\/p>\n

Those who feel
\nnew freedoms like I, some later-borns
\nunaware that they are new, accept
\nthe yellow-bright shimmer
\nspread across the surface
\nas if it were our doing
\nor our due.<\/p>\n

The next poem makes a nod to John Masefield’s ” Sea Fever” but taking it in role reversal with ship at dock and the poet manning the great swooping cranes that unload.<\/p>\n

I want to go down to the sea at dawn
\nwith a lunch bucket and thermos,<\/p>\n

[and then]
\npull
\nand push the big gear shifts to make a boom<\/p>\n

tall as a building turn, swing down toward carloads
\nof gravel, clamp chunks of whatever freighters<\/p>\n

I love the bittersweet of “Ariel” and its death-defying reach in to the unknowable.<\/p>\n

You need
\nthe music to tell your story,
\nto find it, to understand it
\nto know the truth,
\nto reach above the
\nocean’s surface
\nwhere
\nothers
\nlive.<\/p>\n

Death is horribly present in the all too revelatory “what I once would have called a little tiff”. Those of us who have lived long enough know too well of what she speaks…<\/p>\n

i learned
\nto call a spat a spat,
\nan inheritance something
\nmore than money,
\nan argument,
\na fight-to-the-death.<\/p>\n

Magdalena’s opening poem both celebrates and denounces the hippy freedom of a generation that chose to `love’ but not their children well.<\/p>\n

secretly leaning in for more
\nparenting I didn’t get
\npunishment I
\ndeserved
\nno rod spared
\nhere
\nno spoiling.<\/p>\n

“Time Out” speaks of the guilt trip that is motherhood if you are, as many creatives are, a perfectionist and time your merciless master .<\/p>\n

I shoot a response
\nwhat now?
\ntwo bullets of frustration land in
\nher timeless lap
\nas she slips off.<\/p>\n

Magdalena has written a powerfully poignant tribute to all those frightened elderly flood victims, trapped in rising waters and psychologically unable to leave their lives behind –<\/p>\n

You pretend
\nthree hundred netfriends
\nhold your virtual hand
\ntake you places
\nthat don’t involve
\nleaving
\nhome
\nthe perpetual womb
\nshroud
\nyou’ve pushed into.<\/p>\n

Magdalena’s “Coming Back ends the collection with an almost whispered reverie on love and loss in a no man’s land of guilt and recriminations –<\/p>\n

No one dared point a finger.<\/p>\n

We tried not to look at her but it was hard.<\/p>\n

So we looked out of the corner of our eye when
\nwe walked past, our heads thrown back fake
\nlaughter all the while drawn towards the silence
\nof that pain the peripheral gravity that wouldn’t
\nlet us settle into our evening of forgetting.<\/p>\n

This collection offers the feminine take on life, love and everything in between and does it with \u00e9lan!”\u00a0J.R.McRae<\/p>\n

“With moving and poetic imagery Deeper Into the Pond is a wonderful collection of poems focusing on women. This collection highlights all the roles women seem to so effortless embrace and handle, including that of aging. From life, to death, to writing, Deeper Into the Pond has something for everyone.\u201d\u00a0Karen Cioffi, Author, Ghostwriter, Freelance Writer<\/p>\n

“These little gems are about life, love, hunger, yearning, regret and all those things that make us human.\u00a0Moved me as much as anything we read in Engl Lit 101-102.\u201d \u00a0Virgil Jose
\nAuthor: “The Examined Life,”<\/p>\n

“Deeper Into the Pond is another successful collaboration between Carolyn Howard-Johns and Magdelena Ball. I my estimation this collection is even more mature and moving than their previous work.\u00a0Vivid images in this collection of poems distill the lives of the women who wrote them. They speak to all the stages of life and our roles as women reminding us how far we’ve come and how much we have to be grateful for. They celebrate aging and our roles as wives, mothers and lovers. Whatever your age these poems will speak to you of times to look forward to or to remember. These are not poems to read once. They will stay with you forever.\u00a0If you enjoy poetry, I highly recommend this collection.\u201d\u00a0Nancy Famolari<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deeper Into the Pond A Celebration of Femininity by Magdalena Ball and Carolyn Howard-Johnson Original artwork by Jacquie Schnell \u201cVivid images\u2026will speak to you of times to look forward to or to remember. These are not poems to read once. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-365","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366,"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/365\/revisions\/366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magdalenaball.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}