Capture Theory
Aldrich Press, Kelsay Books, 2018
Everything is disappearing in this richly-felt and finely-wrought book of elegies and prayers. And everything is also still here, sustaining us in an alchemy of grief and celebration. In one of the many ars poeticas in the book, Joy Gaines-Friedler offers language for a mother who can no longer speak: “Shoes. Milkweed. Dean Martin.” This mixture of the mundane and the sacred is what we have, she affirms, and when we name it, it is enough.
Ruth L. Schwartz, author of Edgewater
These poems are fundamentally preoccupied with justice and reconciliation. They show that justice – as a kind of trap – is in truth a vital force, like a “conduit of seed” underscored in all phenomena experience: it has its own construct of order. Unwavering in her intent, Ms. Gaines-Friedler shows that if we stand immersive at justice’s threshold – in a prayer state “as much defiance as agreement –” that we too will cull and capture a lightness of being and wisdom, and stand in beauty –like “a battlefield gone to meadow.” We accomplish this task not by merely seeingwhy events occur within justice, but by seeing that the self is like a heroic drum that pings – “it sings one awake.” These are poems of deep reconciliation, moving into grace.
Ken Meisel, author of Beautiful Rust and The Drunken Sweetheart at My Door
“Capture Theory,” springs from the scientific theory that asks where the moon came from—If moon can be read as those orbiting forces of beauty, loss, aging, love, and fear, did we capture them or did they rise from our circumstances, or even from our deepest selves, and once here, how do we hold such things in orbit? Or do they hold us? In centrifugal imagery propelled by the things we love: birds, animals, water, trees, skin on skin, Gaines-Friedler shares a world in motion that still, always, returns to the body that touches, lives, and responds. It is a remarkable collection.
Anne-Marie Oomen, author of Uncoded Woman (poetry)
and the award winning memoir, Love, Sex and 4-H, lives near Traverse City.
CAPTURE THEORY is a Foreword Reviews 2018 Indies Book of the Year Award finalist - Click to view author page
CAPTURE THEORY is a Edward Hoffer 2019 da Vinci Eye Book Award (Cover Art) finalist - Click to view a list of finalists
Click on the link below to see the beautiful artwork of Susan Levin - whose work graces the cover of this book. http://www.susanlevinart.com