Catalina
Title:
Catalina
Author: Laurie
Soriano
Genre: Poetry, Trade Paper, 6X9
Publisher: Lummox Press (PO Box 5301 San Pedro, CA 90733-5301)
www.lummoxpress.com
ISBN: 978-1-929878-87-1
Pages:112
Publishing Date: Sept. 2011
Scroll down to read Laurie Soriano's Bio and some excerpts from Catalina
See Laurie read some of her poems
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Voted Best Poetry Book of the Year
by the Indie Lit Awards!!!
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The is Laurie's first full-length book of poetry. You wouldn't know it, though, because it reads like the work of a seasoned professional, with numerous titles under her belt. We at Lummox hope that this will be the first in a long line of titles by this very talented writer.
Read some of the samples below and we're sure you will agree.
RD Armstrong
Lummox Press
ABOUT Laurie Soriano
Laurie Soriano lives in Palos Verdes, California. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied English in the College of Arts and Sciences and studied marketing in the Wharton School of Business; while at Penn, Laurie studied poetry at the undergraduate and MFA levels. She received a law degree from the University of California, Davis, where she also participated in MFA workshops. Laurie is now a music attorney in Los Angeles, representing recording artists, songwriters and others in the music industry. She is married to Steve Rehaut and has three children—Lucas, Miranda and Grace, and current pets Lulu, Albert and Chico.
COMMENTS:
This book does all the things that great
poetry is supposed to do; touch, challenge, inspire, activate the mind's eye,
make happy and make sad. And there's the added element of having a
cohesive, cumulative work that functions as
a captivating, dream-like autobiography (or concept album?).
Jeff Duncan
A sensualist of the tongue, Laurie Soriano crafts poems that translate the intimate music of relationship, desire, and frailty into compelling poems that treat love in all its guises, including the fierce love of the self that keeps us alive.
Naomi Guttman, author of "Reasons for Winter" and "Wet
Apples"
Laurie Soriano's poems tread quietly then cut deeply. They are relaxed, yet sinewy. They are carefully measured, and then suddenly disarming. Laurie is a brilliant observer whose poems forcefully convey her keen insights.
Billy
Steinberg, Songwriter
Made of individual moments, things close to her heart, her work speaks of the places where all life comes together. By holding up her reflective ‘Self’ she catches these fleeting things, then turns the mirrored surface towards us, where, in the final measures, we see ourselves.
Cris Williamson, Singer/Songwriter (from the Preface)
Here are a few poems from this volume...
Betty’s Dive
I.
Later you remember. There was no rock
in the water, and the dive was perfect.
II.
Her laughing swells in huge concentrics as the others laugh.
She is a strong woman leading. Think of
shoulders twisting through a swimming stroke
while others follow floundering. Think of
splash fights in the water, and her cascades.
Of her scrambling up the cliff that banks
the river, snorting wit to all the dares,
shrugging off the mild warnings. Think of
(others having done exultant cannonballs)
a dive like none, those muscles twisting
as she twists her body through a flip. Think of
laughing when she does her dead man’s float.
And then: c’mon Betty.
Hands of Women
I.
Let my body move you down into her hands in latex gloves
helping you work your way out after you’ve crowned,
now a sharp shoulder, now your slippery midsection, and then
the rest of you in a wet glad swoosh.
They are doctor hands veined with science but woman soft
and those firm hands will catch you, she’ll hold
you to her ribs as the cord is addressed and then lift you up
and swing you to my chest, and then I have you,
Hello baby, hello you baby girl, and you peer at me,
squinting, and we share a silent joke (me through tears),
before I tuck you to my breast, and you
competently do what is needed
as I feel her hands below, delivering the afterbirth,
then tending to my birth wounds before
she pulls the gloves off with a snap, then
jots statistics on a board.
II.
I offer my sad cracked back to her.
First her hands only listen, persuade my body
to tell where it’s crying, and then with her steel muscles
she orders it to breathe
as the candles flicker, and in this dim room
a voice chants Ashanti Ashanti, and my face
is being ground down into the cradle
as my back unclenches, and sighs.
Sometimes we talk, as she kneads a shoulder, a calf,
my face directed anonymously toward the floor, voice raspy
as with no one but a lover, skin warm
and wonton, hair a wild mop. She delivers me
back to the world all slippery and smiling
and I float home, where I find your teenaged self
reading curled up on the couch, and I slide next
to you and take your hand lightly in mine.
Roller Coaster
So sorry for all the times I refused your hand,
that pushy life of the party hand that wanted
to guide a daughter across the dance floor.
Kansas in August, our faces clammy with old sweat.
Standing in line for the Mamba, I surveyed the crowd,
everyone younger than you by twenty years,
as you chatted sociably with everyone
and me, my friend at last, even as your rotting breath
foretold next April’s joke upon us.
The slow clicking climb shifting to the cruel drop,
and you laughed “holy shit!” (just as when I clutched
your arm and the organ started thundering my wedding march).
You turned to check on me, and you took the long curves
with gritted teeth, silent and steady, ready to grab
my hand if I needed it.
Bless you for daring me to ride the Mamba,
and for my screaming like a child, echoing
my joy and fear all over Kansas.
Forgive me, father, that I only held your hand
when the I.V. ran through it
and your life rewound behind your eyes.
Looking Back
If we leave the windows open,
we can hear the sound of the Pacific
crashing every night. In the summers,
we are serenaded by sea lions—
a song of lust and dominion
ringing out among the dim rocks.
We have come to a screeching halt
at the edge of the continent,
like cartoon characters clinging
to the edge of a cliff with bare feet.
We ache for shuttling further, for
the oblivion of the new.
A trail of tears leads back across
the land to the vigorous Atlantic,
a trail we need to follow to make
our peace at gravesites, to celebrate
the anguished earth, to piece back together
with tender hands all that we have broken.