How to See the World: Poems

by Paula J. Lambert

Overview

In How to See the World, Lambert takes us deftly along as she examines the new reality in which we've all awakened in 2020. She peels back its complicated layers with adept use of metaphor, as well as a revelatory tone that will have readers doubling back to unfold new meanings in a line, a verse, or a poem. Real moments of brilliance sparkle calling us to look beyond surface and pattern to recognize something beyond ourselves, even while we languish in a groundswell of change.

Tell me moonlight can't speak...she writes, then convinces us that it can. While pandemic is here and unavoidable, do not approach this collection as an outgassing of that reality. It is about much more—how interconnected we all are while teetering at the brink of change and that we must witness the miracle, not turn away.

—Rose M. Smith, author of Unearthing Ida

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947504233
Publisher:	Bottom Dog Press
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Series:	Harmony Series
Pages:	94
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

Paula J. Lambert, is a native of Massachusetts and graduate of Butera School of Art in Boston, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She has been recipient of awards from the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and Greater Columbus Arts Council. She has published five chapbooks of poetry and currently directs Full/Crescent Press, a small press publisher of poetry books and broadsides. She lives in Columbus with her husband Michael Perkins.

Read an Excerpt

Hyacinth



Walking down the center of the street,

keeping a wide berth from...everything

I marveled at how many more flowers



were blooming than I'd realized, yellow

and white, daffodils mainly, set against

the greenest grass I'd ever witnessed.



The dog I saw ahead was tied to a stake

that looked strong enough to hold him,

so I wished even him well this evening.



We eyed each other quietly, and I felt his

sorrow: red fawn boxer, yellow cord,

off-white stake. He, too, contained in a



way he wasn't built for. He barked once.

I know, I told him. I feel it too, old friend.

He couldn't bear the sympathy, barked



again, strained against the cord, and for

the first time, I doubted we were made

for these times. Turning the corner, I saw



pink and purple in the yard across the

street: hyacinths. I made my way toward

them, refusing to let my heart be broken.

Editorial Reviews

Paula J. Lambert's poetry is always visionary, but visionary on a human scale. She sees with clarity not just the people near us, whom we can touch, but also those out of reach. Sanitizing groceries, we realize everything we do "now extends to something else, every touch, every thought, every / worry, each fond thought." Still more, she touches people who may be lost to us, or seem so. A dead thrush found in the road is reminder that "The world is a terrible, beautiful / place where those not with us are with us / all the time." The poet's vision becomes our vision, and we are stronger and wiser for having seen the world—terrible and beautiful—through her eyes.



- Richard Carr, author of Our Blue Earth



How To See The World startles me awake, my vision clearer and my inner clock rewound. Paula J. Lambert's radical compassion asks us to "Rise up for what you believe in: the sun,/ the moon, the glaciers melting. Ancestors calling our names." Each poem wakes us to blossom, birdsong, breath. Her work ensures that we are more fully alive, more present.

- Laura Grace Weldon, author of Blackbird, 2019 Ohio Poet of the Year

From the Publisher