From Windows: and other poems by Jane M. Newby

The Bulgarian translator (and fellow poet) of the author’s first book of poetry, "A Thief of Roses," described it as “a kind of poetic diary” with “the Muse accompanying her incessantly” and “numerous” sources of inspiration, including “the richness and versatility of nature, where she feels at home.” Her love poems are “extremely laconic.” “She prefers the temptation of the unknown roads and discovery to the comfort of life. Her inner insight follows her dreams beyond the frontier…” “Charms and inner dynamism,” “philosophical depth,” and a “sound sense of humor” are “so characteristic of her works.” “From Windows and other poems” continues this diary and diversity, is thoughtful, lyrical, pointed, humorous, with formal rhymes to Ferlenghettiesque scrawls, new “love that has failed me again” as “you become just another echo in the featureless night” poems, along with homage to a marriage of adventurous “kindred spirits” that is “never smooth but always moving ahead.” She recounts a life with birds—birds that awaken, lure, enchant, mystify, portend, hide, leave. White ducks doomed to be pressed for holidays. Starlings flapping “wings like weapons.” “Birds lost again to the lovely, peaceful sky,” “sometimes too distant to be known.” She is “at home in” icy fields and marshes in fall when “thistles toughen,” comes to know bats soaring “in silence and in grace,” pack rats who “don’t have to settle for less,” and windflowers “no promises can hold no traps ensnare.” In northern wintry blue moments she can see “for an instant, the heart of everything.” She writes of dreams she “reluctantly” has “to shed,” struggles with “not getting every dream I’ve ever had,” “dreams straying through sleep now and then and leaving me restless,” daydreams that can be “tedious” or “vanish in wrangling, illusions, uncertainty” or maybe are not even possible “in worlds so self-contained.” The “dreamspace rising foreign and faintly amid unknown edges and singular views” nourishes and inspires her; and although she doesn’t “need any other world than this” and doesn’t know “what all this ferment and foment will come too, finally,” she still will dream “because the wind unfelt behind windows blows yet and there is enough mystery to keep me looking out…” It’s “the dreams that keep me going.”