Synopsis "You Can Make Your Own Rose"
Description You Can Make Your Own Rose: Poems and Reflections is a bold, spiritually enriching exploration from a poet-philosopher of different forms of violence against girls and women experienced in her own life journey from a father-abused girlhood to midlife. This collection pushes the subject boundaries of poetry and engages our imaginations with unexpected shifts in thought, image and feeling. As the narrator adjusts to the difficult end of an employment relationship, there are spiritual lessons from flowers, trees, birds, turtles, and insects, keeping her on a path of self-expansion and growth. In her new beginning, the narrator is a more worldly caterpillar that has "a strut/bolder colors, bristles...[and] more trust" (from "Caterpillar"). Painful past experiences are revisited with greater self-love and understanding, the narrator referring to herself as "an Artemis," a protector and supporter of women, children and animals. With the affirmation of goddess spirituality, traditional holidays are reconfigured and earth-centered holidays celebrated in joyful circle dances. These are poems about survival, strength, and resilience which inspire us, with our faithful perennials, "to love again and again" (from "Daffodils").
