Good Poetry by Someone I Know...

I'm blessed to have a lot of really talented artists in my life. Some of them create gorgeous visuals, others paint aural pictures. And then there are the poets....who in some ways are my secret favorites. I sometimes believe that poetry isn't something I write, but something I live...but then, I'm a twee nerd.

Anyway, recently, a friend of mine assembled some of his words into a chapbook; I bought one, and was totally blown away by how much his material resonated with me, and how much I loved his verse. (I don't know why it was so overwhelming; I should've expected it, since I've read his writing and enjoyed the hell out of it many times before.)

The friend is the brilliant and wonderful Tony Rella, and the chapbook is entitled, "Seven Keys to Being." A brief excerpt:

The child who picks up the shell and presses her
      ear against it
speaks in noises so profound, words so low that
      the world would swallow her if it could.
Her relentless braying fells the walls of Jericho
      breaks open the borders lets the aliens in
and all the screaming in the world won't put the
      sea in the bottle again.

This is some of the best poetry I've read in a very long time, and I highly recommend it for fans of Rumi, Theodore Roethke, or Robert Creeley. If you're interested in supporting an independent artist, and acquiring a lovely self-published chapbook of provocative poetry, e-mail me and I'll get you in touch with the author.