Selfie with Cherry
Publisher: Glass Lyre PressISBN: 9781941783900Genre: PoetryPrice: $12.00Selfie with Cherry is a 32-page chapbook that chronicles the poet's journey through separation, divorce, alcoholism, and recovery.
Beth Copeland is the author of Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022); Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner; Transcendental Telemarketer (BlazeVOX, 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award winner. She owns and operates Tiny Cabin, Big Ideas™, a retreat for writers in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Reviews
Ecstasy does not come easy, we struggle with surrender, fierce love and betrayal. The human being embracing nature is crushed by Eros and ironic revelation. Death and the clamor of silence stir regret and discovery. Clarity, precision, a universe of broken glass hypnotizes and consumes. We begin with dreams as we rebuild in search of purity, and ultimately we are left with the scars of self-knowledge and tender acceptance. The journey of desire, the migration of butterflies and lady bugs, wildflowers and totemic and chimeric surprise, finally welcome us to a home in exile. The mountain is who we are, as we aspire to grace, as seasons shift in blessing and retribution, leaving us with solitude and divine reflection. Beth Copeland is heart, she is the one that knows these things. She gives us stunning details, strong and frail, saying so much, but never too much. This is intimate poetry, Selfie with Cherry is soul, and we are left naked at a precise and enduring precipice to go on.
—Michael Rothenberg, author of In Memory of a Banyan Tree: Poems of the Outside World, 1985-2022 (Lost Horse Press)
Selfie with Cherry is a delicious bite of fruit – forbidden and otherwise, bittersweet poems redolent of the natural world, peppered with disillusionment and lovers lost. And yet, this sobering sense of loss is beautifully juxtaposed with the freedom and joy that come with a solo flight, “a woman becoming/ invisible and being/ reborn.” I loved this book!
— Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of EROTIC: New & Selected (NYQ Books), poetry editor, Cultural Daily