Red Dragon Press: Books, poetry. Title: Heart on a Leash.

Heart on a Leash

36 pages (1998)

trade paper, saddle-stitched

ISBN 1-891387-01-4

$5.00

About the Book

This slim volume of collected verses, written in the metaphysical tradition, is the essence of the poet's life of discovery. But Grace Cavalieri is no ordinary poet. The search for meaning portrayed here, is the quest to satisfy a kind of love for humankind that is fulfilled in the reflections of her love for poetry. Her artistry has been determined by her passion for helping others to understand poetry, master creative skills and achieve recognition. She is best known as the host of the award-winning radio program, "The Poet and the Poem," which, for twenty years, featured readings and interviews with U.S. Poet Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as less-celebrated, new, and sometimes unpublished poets. She founded two poetry publishing houses, both still in existence. The deepest lights and darks of her own symbolic verses unite and intensify the tempers, tones and intents of the uncountable number of poems she has opened to the reader and listener.

Reviews

Wordhouse: Baltimore Writer's Alliance News, March 1999
"...in this elegant book..., Cavalieri presents elliptical, charged works in the metaphysical tradition."

Mimi Godfrey, Signature, Washington Chapter of the Women's National Book Association, June 1999
"...an exploration of the agonies and rages inherent in human relations.... It holds memories, hungers, and the fury we feel at a world that insists that it is rather impolite to be so demanding."

Contents

A Classic Epic Begins • Stage Makeup • The Heart's Snow • Human Kind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality ...T.S. Eliot • Once You Were Young With Soft Hands • The First Death She Ever Saw • Nettie • Commonplace Is What It Is • There Is Something So Sad • The Other Woman • Condemned To Meaning • They Live Where Death Never Reaches • In The Beauty Parlor • Has Anyone Seen My Friend Jan? • Imagine My Mistake • Because We Are Present • Driving South To Corpus Christi • What Would You Tell Yourself?

Sample

Driving South To Corpus Christi

I found you couldn't cross a bridge

at Chain-of-Rocks in Mississippi.

Just put your foot down and

drive straight across you said

to me, a child,

although I couldn't drive a car.

Push the pedal down and just

go straight ahead you said.

I did,

until the next bridge rose, high

and narrow steel where

we stopped and went into a bar

to give the man two dollars

to drive us in our car.

You abandoned your son as an infant

and he abandons you now to old age.

Since you are dying and

taking to long about it

I think I know why you can't go on.

I'm praying with my foot down on the pedal

too far away to hold your hand.

Go ahead and close your eyes and don't look down.

I'll take over now, or I'll go in and get the man.