Blues for French Roast With Chicory

Poetry. Women's Studies. California Studies. Environmental Studies. "Newberry's poems arrive like a friend bearing news. We think we are to hear something ordinary, then suddenly it becomes unusual. Or we find ourselves being told something odd... and it gets even odder. Newberry is a poet of spiritual surprise, a poet of transcending images pulled from a very real, contemporary, attentive woman's life."--John Balaban

"Herein you will find poems in which the sky can break into jigsaw puzzle pieces and fall to the ground, the setting winter sun apologizes for leaving homeless people still cold, and a sky full of stars consider their own mortality. These are poems full of magic and ghosts: the corpulent ghost with 'a thunderstorm of a smile' in the title poem and the 'great ghosts' of Geodes. Or the magic can be as simple as the transcendence of snow falling expressed by one who's never seen it fall. Current events creep into these pages in the form of politics ('Me and Amy Lowell'), nuclear contamination ('Act of Retrieval'), and California's wind-driven wildfires. In fact strong winds, primarily the seasonal Santa Ana, blow through many of these poems stirring and clearing the air around them and the reader."--Michael J. Arcangelini

"Here is longing for what was and what never was. Newberry uses juxtaposition freely to illuminate life's dichotomies, and in doing so, reminds us that there are always opposites to consider and choices to make. And in the end, those choices define us, both inwardly and outwardly. Where some would object to this collection as being depressing, I found it to be an affirmation of life, of hard times survived, and still kicking. It explores what I believe are common reactions to common experiences...So what do I mean by all this? Only that these poems are worth a careful read, with heart, mind, and memory open to the pain that life deals us, and a ready recognition that none of us are alone in our struggles."--Jim Lewis