Patricia Lee Sharpe

Prose and Poetry

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A Partial Rainbow Makes No Sense

“A varied but cohesive collection that nicely balances the big and small pictures….If a reader were to pick up this collection and flip to a random poem in its first half, he or she might peg Sharpe (Coming and Going Love, 2010) as a poet with plenty to say about violence and poverty, iniquity and inequality. A peek into the book’s second half, however, might give a reader the impression of a finely focused writer tuned to appreciate subtle social exchanges and their implications. A full reading…reveals [how] the voice that laments suffering and military action gets blended with a more humorous voice that muses on bathroom lines and artificial knees….[Sharpe’s] voice is critical but tinged with hope; her words are sharp but chosen wisely. She seems to see something complete beyond life’s fragments—the idea that a world with war, poverty and inequity may not make sense, but like a partial rainbow, there’s still a touch of beauty in its imperfection.”  –Kirkus

Lovers split.  Daughters venture.  Toddlers rebel.  Mothers cope.  An old woman sits alone with her tea.  Kindness meets terror.  Eve confronts Adam.  Violence invites retribution.  Mountains beckon the spirit.  Alienation slides into mystical absorption. This wide-ranging collection of remarkably accessible poetry speaks to and of real people battered by inner and outer conflict.  With unflinching honesty, gentle irony and shimmering depth, these poems depict emotion, not as recollected, but caught in the act.

 

 

SNAILS

must think the world
a very dangerous place.
They’re seldom without a shell
for refuge. At the least touch
they rush inside, but not
for long. Bored, bold,
curious, hungry—soon
they’re extending those soft
but eager antennae and all
else follows. Snails excrete
a track that some call slime.
But, mornings, when websilk
glitters wit dew, what I find
are traceries of silver.

REFUGEE CAMP

Hunkered down in camps, wrapped
in borrowed blankets, sinking at last
into velvety sleep, the women well

remember (and try, for the children, to invoke)
a land where trees bent with flowers and fruit
and people cried only (so it seems

now) from an overdose of the drug
once known as happiness, which (they try
to assure the children) is sometimes, in some

places, still stocked. The children, pinched
with hunger but drifting off, are soothed
by mothers’ voices and the touching trust

that parents always know what needs
to be known and always tell the truth.

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A Partial Rainbow Makes No Sense

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