By Robert Walch
Vagabond Dawns, by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld (Cross-Cultural Communications; $20).
Local connection: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld lives in Big Sur. A painter, writer and poet, Kleefeld has written nine books, including Soul Seeds: Revelations and Drawings, which was nominated for the 2008 Pushcart Prize, and Climates of the Mind.
Content: This collection of more than 100 short poems evokes images ranging from cyclical rhythms of nature to the passions and complexities of love to the timeless spiritual potentialities of the human mind and soul.
From “Old Monterey Wharf,” which captures a stroll along the iconic local landmark, and “Big Sur to Monterey,” a poem set along Highway 1, to “Sunset of Painful Beauty,” a piece that bemoans the collapse of civilization, these poems cover an eclectic array of subjects.
The book also includes a CD of Kleefeld reading a selection of these poems, accompanied by musicians Barry and Shelley Phillips.
Prologue quote: Bernfried Nugel, the University of Münster’s director of the Centre for Aldous Huxley Studies, writes of the poetry in this book, “I perceive the all-encompassing vigor of Carolyn Kleefeld’s individual style that not merely alludes to outstanding representatives of the poetic tradition, such as Rimbaud, Pound, Eliot, Lawrence, Kazantzakis and others, but rather incorporates them into ‘poetic tapestries’ of her own.”
Book signing: At 7:30 p.m. today, the author will host a book signing and talk on creativity at Luminata Books & Gifts, 631 Cass St., Monterey.
Audience: Those with a love of poetry will find Kleefeld’s work refreshing and worth mulling over.
