Penny Harter

 

Turtle Blessing

Poems



64 pages


5.5 x 7.5 inches


$11.00


ISBN: 1-888809-01-9

 

 

Penny Harter’s poems are the craft of a true seer, necessary words in an era of disruptive human doings. With minute insight into life’s precious web, she reinstates our ‘mother tongue’ & walks us into a garden—not mythological, but real—where stones sing, worms hear, whales call, fog ‘leaves scales on our limbs’ & sun fills our bones with a melody at once ancient, at once new. These poems—beautiful, perceptive, startling—return us to our senses, & point the way home.

—John Brandi


Penny Harter speaks with the wisdom of her kinship to the greater biotic community. Her meld of intuition, intelligence, talent and command has resulted in an exceptional and complete collection of poems that reflects great reverence for the spirit of Nature while offering glimpses of the frightening hubris that characterizes our own species. This elegant volume is very important both poetically and philosophically.

—Jack Loeffler


In a time of destruction we need a turtle blessing, we need again to hear the voices of all those other lives around us—speaking as community. Penny Harter sings us back to the center of things, to the heart, where everything speaks. Through her poems we try to regain ‘the old way of moving on earth’, where we find our way back into the conversation, back into the real community life. Here we find the blessings of turtle, deer, skunk, rock and water. We are blessed with the language of light, we are learning the planet by ear, and our hearts have been changed.

—Gary Lawless


Penny Harter once livesd in Santa Fe, New Mexico, now New Jersey. Much of her work reflects ecological concerns and an imperative sensibility toward co-habitation with other species. She has won fellowships and awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America. Her previous books include: Stages and Views (Katydid Books); Grandmother's Milk (Singular Speech Press), Shadow Play: Night Haiku (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers), as well as Buried in the Sky (La Alameda Press).