Open Heart

by Judith Mickel Sornberger

STAFF PICK OF THE WEEK.

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This week our staff pick is Open Heart, a full length collection by Judith Sornberger, to celebrate the news that a CD including a song written to her poem “Pioneer Child’s Doll” has received several Grammy nominations. “Pioneer Child’s Doll” appeared in Open Heart in 1993.

Judith writes, “The song by that title is part of a song cycle called ‘Within These Spaces’ on a CD of composer Lori Laitman’s songs by the same title. In addition to the other nominations for the album as a whole, the song cycle has been nominated under the ‘contemporary classical composition’ category.”

The sinewy, emotional beauty of heritage and hearth

The experience of growing up on the plains of Nebraska informs the sensibility and language of this moving collection of poetry.

“This warmly loving book is hard to put down and hard to forget. Sornberger is a poet to watch.” – Library Journal

“The title poem exemplifies some of Sornberger’s strengths: a clear, emotional voice; unique but graceful metaphoric choices; an engaging theme of family connections and heritage.” – Booklist

“The poet’s control of forms holds her readers in place while Sornberger steals, retells, and resignifies women’s stories.” – Hilda Raz, editor of Prairie Schooner

“What an openness to life and its teachings, what an openness to the being of others, so that somehow they come pulsingly alive; what deep-won comprehension over years has gone into creating these poems. Truly they are titled Open Heart…struggling to illuminate for us the tangled bonds of family and love, what binds each to each, the memorable in the perishable, the marks of time’s passing, and the dear significance in the everyday.” – Tillie Olsen

Judith Mickel Sornberger’s poetry is widely published and is anthologized in Mother to Daughter/Daughter to Mother (Feminist Press) and Sexual Harassment: Women Speak Out (The Crossing Press). She is an associate professor of English at Mansfield University, Pennsylvania.

Poetry/Women’s Studies

ISBN 0-934971-31-5

Paper, 128 pages, $9.95 + FREE SHIPPING

ISBN 0-934971-32-3
Cloth, $19.95 + FREE SHIPPING