A collection of poems written for and about an adopted two-year-old Chinese daughter by her adoptive parents, this book is of special interest to families of adopted children, Chinese and otherwise, and to lovers of fine poetry. Written in the distinctive voices of both mother and father, the poems explore the joys and troubles of parenthood and the experiences of becoming a family.

Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter

Literature & Fiction

Siegel, Joan I.

Solonche, Joel

Poetry

Grayson Books

Poetry. "These passionate, caring poems range seamlessly from personal lyric to public outcry, from a pair of well-turned pantoums of childhood memories to a poem that rewrites the liturgy of a responsive reading from the Passover service. Siegel knows how to go for the small specific details that illuminate even the darkest subjects"--Maxine Kumin. "HYACINTH FOR THE SOUL is a beautifully well-worked piece of imagination: ironic, lyrical, and elegant. Siegel's poems so often begin in daily living, poems that value the very simple or modest: what 'abides' or 'suffices.' Sometimes somber, and sometimes happy, her poems shoot out into the cosmos and let us look at our living from that vantage. There are the pleasures of metaphor, where the parts of an idea suddenly condense or burst into a completely new structure that we recognize immediately: the 'shape turning in the flame'"--Rosemary Deen.

Hyacinth for the Soul

Deerbrook Editions

"Subdued beauty surrounds the reader from the first breath of Joan Siegel's new book, Light at Point Reyes. If there is a Golden Mean, then Siegel has found it, balancing a realistic vision of a starving, brutal, torn world, and the exquisite joy that comes with small recognitions provided by art and human love. In these poems, I felt the power of Wordsworth, the silky lyricism of Debussy, and the centered presence of an artist, like Georgia O'Keeffe." - Diane Wakoski, author of Argonaut Rose

Light at Point Reyes

Shabda Press

"Time is palpable in Joan Siegel's book THE FOURTH RIVER; it moves and flows through each poem, taking the reader forward and backward in chronology, imagining an existence in which the speaker's father can be both boy and man simultaneously. This book is a collection of time: anniversaries-first twenty then thirty-and birthdays and units of measure. In "This Birthday" time is both solid and malleable: "You rooted first/then traveled alone/the treacherous journey,/making way for me later." Perhaps the best definition of time can be found in the poet's own words: "Time ends in the gold/throat of lily sipping/a last drought of sun." In Siegel's work, time is a golden atmosphere-tactile, pulsing, and flowing liquid as rivers." -Andrea Spofford, Editor Zone 3 Press "Whatever her subject matter Joan Siegal, like the best of poets, admits us into her passionately contained vision of the world. In THE FOURTH RIVER she explores origins and returns with beautiful simplicity." -Diane Wakoski "The touching poems in Joan Siegel's THE FOURTH RIVER are moments of life and loss in which "even the wind catches fire." Reflecting the fragility of memory and of time itself, they flow with inexorable capacity of the heart's meanders and gravity." -Ronald Spatz, Editor, Alaska Quarterly Review

The Fourth River

"The gods and their myths have nothing on our human lives. Aging, attending failing parents, watching a child grow, a season change, a relationship falter, or the stars spin away from us--all of life is metamorphosis. With spare, delicate language and sometimes startling metaphors, Siegel takes the pulse of living creatures, even the smallest, delves inside the atom, and spins out to the galaxies. Death and loss permeate these poems and lead to somber reflection, but the poet resists despair. Against so many losses, Siegel celebrates what is found--a blue heron, music of Bach and Chopin, the child abandoned in a railway station, the gift that makes her a mother. This is a poet who can forge beauty from mortality, like the dying hummingbird, 'its wings singing / fiercely as the heart / in its splintered cage.'" Mary Makofske, author of Traction (Ashland, 2011) "Whatever her subject matter, Siegel beckons the reader to explore the vast world of nature and the human heart." Ronald Spatz (Editor, Alaska Quartery Review)

Metamorphosis

Poetry. ARCHAEOLOGY covers several subjects through reflection and memory. Details and impressions, the visible and invisible, past and present, reflection on life, human conditions, and nature; the reader travels the currents in the verse by way of keen language, a musicality of voice, that reveals the awareness of all things wistful and beautiful.  "ARCHAEOLOGY excavates the past in exquisite language. Its focus is family: Siegel's own family and families far ourtside her personal sphere. Mothers and daughters especially come under her perceptive eye, three generations often missing each other in passing, sitting in silence, but also knitting together to create a skein of connection. These are poems of longing, loss and celebration, for what else to do when losing someone, but 'sit with her all night and sing'? Animals, domestic and wild, move through these poems, both as their own mystery [and] as a metaphor. Siegel knows that stillness is necessary for transformation—'a chamber for one/ where you disolve and grow /wings.' Though mostly serious and contemplative, she has moments of wry humanity and always 'Peers at darkness through the bright eye of the world."—Mary Makofske  "Whatever her subject matter, Siegel beckons the reader to explore the vast world of nature and the human heart."—Ronald Spatz

Archaeology

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