Tag: sundressreadsreview

Sundress Reads: Review of small earthly space

Sundress Reads logo, which shows a sheep reading, with glasses on and a book. Logo is black and white.
small earthly space book cover, which shows a red poppy blossom with a starry sky in the background

With an intriguing curlew bird guiding the reader on a journey of metaphysical thoughts and poppies dancing us from page to page, small earthly space (Shanti Arts Publishing, 2025) by Marjorie Maddox is an enchanting collection of poems that mix the everyday with the spiritual and preternatural. Part nature writing and part musing on the human experience, this book will cause you to pause and reflect, both to appreciate the grandeur of the prose and to enjoy being struck by the meanings. Unique artworks by Karen Elias are perfectly paired with each poem, and I would personally love several of them displayed on my wall next to their inspirations.

Divided into five parts, small earthly space begins with an introduction to the messenger—the curlew—who has some saintly connections it forages for, when not burrowing deep for its own sustenance. “How far down would you go for wisdom?” (Maddox 23) we are asked, while the curlew takes us to the depths of the ocean before showing us the fine line that separates heaven from earth above. At times, the poetry has a mysterious vibe, and at other times, a more worldly one. The curlew sketches the spiritual for us, after which “another Babel [is] reconstructed in our own image” (Maddox 24) and we enter the human-focused world.

Part II brings us sharply to poetry about the everyday: about a mother sitting quietly, about a home, and about eating blueberry pie at a cemetery. We’re walked through a junkyard and deathbed before getting to rejoin nature with a gentle poem of clouds and dandelions. After the more transcendental topics of Part I, Part II feels like we’ve landed on the ground, and are walking around observing everyday life from within rather than soaring around it. Part III contains a few poems about an intense wildfire that happened in the town of Curlew, Washington. We meet our curlew bird again, this time as a witness to the destruction from the wildfire. Topics of devastation and danger feature in this section, along with some environmental poetry about endangered species, including humans. Our curlew witness calls out into the loneliness of the wildfire-ravaged ecosystem and gets no response. Maddox helps the reader experience the loneliness of the burned landscape before we’re whisked away to Part IV and a more stellar atmosphere.

A curlew bird is bending down, examining a bright red poppy it has just discovered. The ground is grey and seems desolate, as if it might be on the moon or an alien planet. In the background is a starry sky with a purple nebula and a crescent moon or planet.
Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy

My favorite poem from this collection opens Part IV: “Curlew of the New Moon Discovers a Poppy.” The curlew remembers the beauty of the poppies before the destruction and

  “un-buries instead the curved
  brilliance of joy, hallucinates
  a happiness addictive enough
  to be real.” (Maddox 76)

The reader feels wonder and awe again, at the beauty Earth offers us. We then sail through a set of poppy-themed poems, each lovely and paired with a custom artwork, as seen in the accompanying image here by Elias. As a fan of nature poetry, I love seeing this themed section. We read of a poppy’s connection with a cedar tree and glimpse the poppy’s personality (sometimes shy, sometimes bold), which introduces us to the last part of this book called “Bloom.”

Most of the pieces in this book fit on one page or two opposing pages, but two pieces are longer: “Made to Scale” and “Hues of the Hollyhock.” “Made to Scale” treats us to a more extensive writing about beginnings and endings and opportunities. In a forest of possibilities, everything depends on your own views and actions. Maddox repeats the following idea in multiple ways throughout the poem: “It is only a door if you enter or leave” (Maddox 47). After all, if you don’t use it, what may be a door might as well be a stone wall.

The second long poem of the book opens Part V, meditating on the many “Hues of the Hollyhock.” Unlike what you might expect, only one featured hue is a pink. We see a ghostbloom, blood flowers, and black hollyhocks, all written about with dark words and topics. An excerpt from “Hues of the Hollyhock”:

  “O ghost
    of Seasons Past, if these shadows

  remain unaltered by the Future …,
    will only black smoke and drab ash,
  ubiquitous soot and too-late regret
    populate our abandoned gardens?” (Maddox 90)

The poem ebbs and subsides with a light show in a kimono blossom brightening our senses before transitioning to a quiet amber calm, then, a final splash of rainbow color.

Most of the writing in this collection treats the prosaic with elegance. Maddox infuses her style into each poem, whether the theme is nature or more Gothic like death and destruction. The book touches the spiritual while keeping us grounded with bold visuals, traveling through both the unknown as well as the “imaginative and geographical locations we call home” (Maddox 17).

small earthly space has broad appeal, and I recommend it for most adult readers, for both casual or thought-provoking reading. This collection can be enjoyed both in public or private, but is best read somewhere where you have space for peaceful contemplation. Your own backyard or a public garden or park would be ideal. I would also like to recommend the following tea pairing Bird Nerd Birdwatching Tea. This tea combines the familiar into a unique blend that will both sooth and gently stimulate your senses, enriching your similar reading experience of small earthly space.

small earthly space is available from Shanti Arts Publishing

Ana Mourant sitting on grass reading a book. She has light skin and blonde hair, has a sunflower in her hair, and is wearing a green sundress.

Ana Mourant (she/her) is an editorial intern for Sundress Publications and a recent graduate of the University of Washington’s editing program. She holds a Certificate in Editing as well as a Certificate in Storytelling and Content Strategy, and a BA in English Language and Literature, with a minor in Professional Writing. Ana conducts manuscript evaluations, edits, and proofreads, as well as provides authenticity and sensitivity readings for Indigenous Peoples content. Ana loves nature writing and Indigenous cultures, and, when she’s not working, is often out in the wilderness tracking animals, Nordic skiing, or just enjoying nature.

Sundress Reads: Review of The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich

Julie Weiss draws inspiration from renowned love poetry in her collection The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Rich’s 1977 work, Twenty-One Love Poems, is a stunning portrayal of love–cutting and vulnerable and breaking at the seams with its want. Weiss brings the magic of Rich’s collection to the present with poems that echo its desire. The poems in The Jolt are devoted and pleading, singing to their beloved but laying clear the difficulties in their pursuits. Weiss paints the process of a queer love story through consistent structure that represents real-world barriers, and still her vibrant language shines past formal constraints.  

Weiss’s Twenty-One Love Poems are one poem shy of Rich’s twenty-two. In The Jolt, there are twenty numbered poems, and then one in the middle between the tenth and eleventh called the “Floating Poem.” Each poem consists of six couplets. Weiss’ adherence to line structure reflects the careful diplomacy of marginalized love in public: characters are imagined artfully tucking constellations of feelings into social practice and rehearsed dispositions. In Weiss’ poem, “XV”, the speaker recounts: “More bird than human, I’ve crossed waters to reach a land that didn’t wither / under the gaze of my desires” (16). The lines suggest having to cross or even overtake humanness in order to love in the way the speaker does. The sheer expression of the speaker’s persistence and longing reminds readers of the barriers faced by queer people in unsafe environments, where love may be caged. Still, Weiss proves that the love shines in resistance past structures that would try to suppress it. She teases real vulnerability, the peace and rawness of “pretense after pretense, falling” (10). The dance around constricted line structure suggests disdain for systems that would inhibit the intimate display of person present in the poems’ confessions. The speaker admits,

“I’ve never seen the strings of human

existence dangle so flamboyantly from

the fingers of madmen…

still, if the earth splits in two, I’ll cling to you,

and it will be enough.” (13)

The power of intimacy is proven to rise above any systemic imposition or expectation of custom. In Weiss’ poems, I hear Rich’s proclamation of “our life” revisited: “this still unexcavated hole / called civilization, this act of translation, this half-world” (Rich V). Weiss is continuing to build the half-world into wholeness through art. And her act of fighting through creation seems to me the strongest act of translation we have: to show ourselves and our possibilities by putting life into words. 

Such unveiled intimacy in the poems suggests a powerful secret world of love whose importance is exacerbated through language and artistic tools. In the second poem in the collection, the speaker recalls that, “bursting / I watch you eat, smile for a lack of language” (2). Accepting that there are not words here, in turn, expresses the most. The speaker believes that there is a layer of reality sparkling beyond what can be said, that hangs between the smile of one and the eyes of another and lacks language but is full by itself; perhaps this is a world the speaker and recipient share. This theme of layered realities is strengthened by the intermittent use of Spanish words in the poems. Lines like “te quiero, you say, and mean it” (21) remind readers of something hidden and shared just between speaker and lover. The value of their relationship repeatedly outshines any restriction, societal or systemic; this is proven by the persistence of love in parts of the poem that break past convention, like the poem’s language. In fact, in her line, “who needs translation when our bodies / speak a thousand different languages, / all of them born of the same tongue?” (2), Weiss suggests the superiority of feeling over even the whole project of its translation, hers and Adrienne’s, of poetry and expression themselves.  

That tension between the written project and the life it captures is resolved somewhat in the last line of the last poem, which grounds the whole collection. “How our children will continue this poem,” Weiss concludes (21). Because perhaps the poem is life, and so the poet is the wisher and dreamer and maker of all its wonders. Children must be poets, then, too. And there will be children — the speaker and lover’s children or someone else’s children — but there will be children who carry love forward. Weiss balances the collection in its ending. She holds that art has a valued place as the necessary vessel for feeling, but hints at the victory of passion and experience. 

Julie Weiss’s The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich is available from Bottlecap Press

Image description: A young woman with shoulder-length dark blonde curly hair sits in front of the camera, smiling without teeth. She wears a blue tank top and a white scarf.

Isabelle Whittall is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in combined Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She co-hosts the radio show Hail! Discordia! on CITR 101.9fm, and is an Editorial Board Member of UBC’s Journal of Philosophical Enquiries.