Crafting these poems, I weave together the words I’m given. I make subtle use of rhyme, repeating similar sounds within, rather than at the end of, lines. What emerges enlists the elements of poetry -- sound, rhythm, image, form -- to honor both the living and the dead.
A prize-winning poet and essayist, Lisa Sarasohn has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in a variety of books and magazines. Her writing celebrates body, earth, language, life.
Lisa has studied with poets including North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer, Glenis Redmond, and Carolyn Forché. Richard Chess, director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, describes Lisa’s poems as “beautiful, moving, intelligent, inventive, wise, tender, charming.”
Lines from a poem in which Lisa introduces herself include:
I’m twice-born from the beginning,
skin rosy with the colors of sunrise.
I come from a line of people
who keep the promises they make.
I have oceans inside me, and rising fires,
granite slopes strewn with blueberries,
lush meadows laced with Queen Anne’s grace.