CLICK HERE TO ORDER
(you will then order at Finishing Line Press)
Janet McMillan Rives was born in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Storrs until moving to Tucson, Arizona midway through high school. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona (B.A.) and Duke University (M.A., Ph. D.) She taught college economics for thirty-five years and retired as Professor Emerita of Economics from the University of Northern Iowa. She resides outside of Tucson. Her love of poetry began during her youth in New England when she discovered the poetry of Robert Frost. She has been reading poetry her entire life and actively writing poetry since the 1980s. She is active in several small poetry writing groups in Tucson. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Lyrical Iowa, Ekphrastic Review, Sandcutters, The Avocet, The Blue Guitar, Fine Lines, Heirlock and The Raw Art Review and in anthologies such as Voices from the Plains, Facing West, Desert Tracks: Poems from the Sonoran Desert, and The Very Edge. Into This Sea of Green is her first collection of poetry.
|
Journey with Janet McMillian Rives Into This Sea of Green: Poems from the Prairie where we are treated to her keen observations of a singular place that clearly holds her heart. These well-crafted poems offer moments of understanding that can transform our thinking; What inspires this woman to “stop and look and love this land.” What is “reason enough for a wave” on a long stretch of road. What’s under the palate of color and behind the “click, click, clicks,” of a full-moon capture. Rives poems witness what has vanished, what lingers in places abandoned, and the dynamic beauty of this sweeping landscape. Be prepared to share her awe and discovery on the roads she travels in Nebraska and Iowa.
I recommend Janet Rives’s Into This Sea of Green to all of my writing friends and students. Her book overflows with precise and descriptive language, and this artistic look at the world through which she travels is a testament to her observational skills. “Called to Stay,” “Amish Roofers,” “The Trees Tell the Story,” “No Caboose,” and “Sandhills Wildflowers” pull the reader into past scenes, important conversations, and memories that illustrate a life well lived.
|
Triple Moon Shot
We head out for an evening drivealong Sowbelly Road,
twisting, turning, tracing W
and then J as we follow the creek
winding north through pine hills.
Above, a golden escarpment
is lit by the waning sun.
What seems to be a dead gopher
becomes, instead, a snapping turtle,
very much alive, laying eggs
in the burrow she has dug
smack dab in the middle of our track.
Down the road, we stop the car
to see the sun's remaining rays
cast a purple glow on rugged rocks.
Then facing east, surprise,
we see an ivory disc rise.
Three shutterbugs, enraptured
click, click, click.
The full moon, captured.