The Light Tears Loose - Softcover

Ballentine, Kb

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1421836327 ISBN 13: 9781421836324

Publisher: Blue Light Press, 2019

Synopsis

Sky, trees, water, birds: though nature appears everywhere in Ballentine’s work, it rarely does so for its own sake. It is more symbolic of internal or external struggle, development, and thought rather than “pretty” detail. 

 

The poems in The Light Tears Loose move from illustrations of light into dark – then darker –territory before it morphs back to light. Past and present circumstances often feel overwhelming, but it is in seeking that “silver lining” that we find reason to move forward, to keep going when the way seems vague or threatening. Our fear in living does not keep us from experiencing love and beauty, friendship and brightness along the way. 

 

As witnesses in the world, by connecting with nature, we can indulge ourselves with rest and renewal because we see it happen day after day, season after season. Darkness and winter come to us all but so do sunshine and spring. This is what we hold on to, even when the shadows creep so close we can’t breathe. Keep moving forward: on the other side is the light.

About this title

Review

In The Light Tears Loose, KB Ballentine

explores the physical and psychic gradations

of light and dark with a naturalist’s eye for

exquisite detail and a musician’s ear for the

sonic power of language to carry meaning.

In these poems, self and nature reveal themselves

in the flux of creation and destruction,

torn loose from their immersion in the daily

sensual world. Continuing her search for

mystical union, Ballentine faces loss with

spare lyricism and haunting grace. The

book’s profound embodiment in the natural

world serves as ballast and celebration.

            ~ Teresa Cader

 

Light and dark tug each other’s sleeve in KB Ballentine’s luminous collection,

The Light Tears Loose, each a pulse in the literal and the emotional landscape.

And both must be present if we are to grow and heal, an arc of shadow

within and without, “as we lean / into the wind, knowing this road will lead

us home.” Amid the opposites that weave us into ourselves, we must carry

this knowing as both the “snowdrift and starlight ascending.” Read, as Frost

writes, “and be whole again beyond confusion.”

            ~ Linda Parsons, author of Candescent and This Shaky Earth

 

In this sixth collection of poems, KB uses her remarkable gifts of observation

and words to capture and remind the reader of the beauty around us: stones

softened with moss; the wrens’ psalm; winter’s brittle breath still sculpting

field and forest. But just as fog silences the crescent moon, the poet exhorts

us to enjoy this beauty now, for life is finite and the journey fraught with

sorrow, pain, and aging: the next world stenciled under the skin.

            ~ Jim Johnston, author of Exile Revisited and The Price of Peace

Edition details

• Publisher: Blue Light Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1421836327
• ISBN 13: 9781421836324
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 102