40 POEMS AT 40 by Ingrid Wilson – reviewed by Gabriela Marie Milton
40 POEMS AT 40 by Ingrid Wilson is the manifesto of an extremely intelligent, and talented, woman unafraid to explore her past and her inner and outer worlds. Ingrid’s poetry soars to the sky when the seasons change. It dwells in the most secret corners of the soul when dark moments knock on the door.
Ingrid has written 40 beautiful poems. 40 beautiful poems in which one comes face to face with yearnings to change the world, biographical notes, questions about the birth of the universe, pain, and love. Ingrid’s poems weave splendidly the ontological and the epistemological plans to create art. What, and how, come together in an unbelievable journey into the life of a woman in which children go to school and birthdays need to be celebrated.
Oh, and how the landscape plays a role in her beautiful poetry. Italy, England, Spain are not only used for decorative purposes. In Ingrid’s poetry they become intricate parts of the author’s soul.
The space and the time are perceived through intimate prisms. There is North and South, and there is the sea, with its majesty. There is a certain November sky with its colors. There are dancing ice queens and solstices of the heart. There are striking lines like: “I am the song unsung/the life unlived.”
One can almost hear the opening villanelle with her up and down tonalities. It sounds like the song of a nightingale.
The book will be released next month when Ingrid turns 40. Here are a thousand cheers for this stunning volume of poetry and for its author – a woman who knows how to ask questions about the real meaning of life. A woman who does not mince words and does not submit to stereotypes.
Read 40 POEMS AT 40. It’s a fabulous book. You will not be disappointed.
Publication date: February 11, 2022. The book will be available for pre-order before the publication date. You can find Ingrid’s work here.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose in Manhattan Book Review
In Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Gabriela Milton, presents an assorted collection that’s intended to invigorate the soul and speak to the depths of human understanding. She delineates her views on feminism, misogyny, passion, hate, spirituality, winning, and losing; while the most salient topic is love…
Milton’s poetic artistry is bold and beautiful, deep and confounding. It’s laced with gorgeous symbolism and imagery. For example, in “Love Numbers”, she writes, “We laid in the grass, shadows of poppies playing on our faces with the same rhythmicity of the waves on tranquil days.” In “Who Am I”, she notes, “I delight in the waves like a gazelle in the grasslands” and later states, “My mind spreads its wings.” Due to her gift in this area, college literature professors may find her work worthy of analysis and use. It is rich with an assortment of literary greats: personification; simile; and metaphor, just to name a few…
Overall, this collection is noteworthy in its uniqueness and eloquence. Many will likely savor the journey it invites them to travel and will gain insight into the powerful impact of poetry and prose on its connoisseurs.
Holding Your Hand – poem included in Woman: Splendor and Sorrow
I walk through the future holding your hand Barefoot I pray to a God whose name I don’t know The rain washes our hearts engraved in the wood The child is the flower of tears and of sweet blood It’s not love that we want It’s the resurrection of dead The breaths that the sea kills with her looks Your hands and the sin we will never commit The room that we rented is empty and cold You know that I came You feel that I left I hear your voice Black coffee waits for the sunrise of us And the future runs in the past
You can get my book Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: | Love Poems and Poetic Prose on Amazon
Updates
Thank you again to those who enter the poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. I hope to announce the winners at the end of October.
Help our literary community strive. Do not forget to read, like, and submit to MasticadoresUSA.
Gabriela Marie Milton/ The Pacific Ocean, August 27, 2021
A piece from my collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings
Profuse desires
rolling like waves on white marble sands roaring like tigers looking for prey howling like winds in gray towns of ghosts resting on sofas like courtesans praying like nuns married to Christ tormenting my dreams your raspy deep voice dying for love
Thank you to Diana for her beautiful review of my new poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrow
My deepest thanks to Diana, a wonderful author, and a great supporter of our WP community, for her beautiful review of Woman: Splendor and Sorrow. The book is available on Amazon here.
Here is a snippet from Diana’s Amazon review.
“Her free form poems are rich with imagery and emotion, gently loving, full of longing and loss, and sometimes shining with personal strength. In every way, this collection captures the diversity of experience that comes with being a woman…
A highly recommended collection for readers of poetry who enjoy flowing imagery, beautiful words, and a deep dive into the soul of womanhood.”
Please visit Diana’s site here. Her books are gorgeous. You will enjoy reading any of them.
There is also a wonderful review of my collection posted by KichiRsa on Amazon too. I do not know who she is but I am deeply grateful to her for reading my collection and writing a review.
An excerpt from her review:
“Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton is a book of the divine, platonic, sometimes erotic, but often intense and thought-provoking poems. The language is fresh and delightful and reminds the famous poets’ classic works at the beginning of the XX century. At the same time, it is very modern, too. Rendered with richness and beauty, experiences of true love, sadness, sorrow, and grief we all felt at some point or another. You’ll find everything there: from madness to deep ache, from romantic dreams to constantly shifting relationships. In one word, her poems are magic.”
Thank you KichiRsa!
Several Updates
Please visit MasticadoresUSA. Support our community. There are several new and wonderful poems up. Do not forget to like, follow, and submit.
I post poetry on Twitter several days a week. I retweet other poets too. Please follow me on Twitter here @shortprose1
Thank you to everyone who summitted pieces to the Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrows. As a reminder those are the guidelines for submission:
The poetry contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow is now open. This contest honors the literary community that has supported me in my writing journey, and celebrates my becoming a #1 Amazon best-selling author.
To participate, you should write one poem inspired by a piece from my #1 Amazon best-selling poetry collection Woman: Splendor and Sorrowand list the name of the piece that inspired your submission. A number of poems from Woman: Splendor and Sorrowcan be found on this blog.
The deadline for submission is September 20, 2021. Please submit your work before September 20 at shortprose12@gmail.com.
Guidelines for submission:
Label your submission Poetry Contest Woman: Splendor and Sorrow.
Do not submit more than one poem.
Do not forget to include: the poem from Woman: Splendor and Sorrow that inspired you, your name or pen name, and the email address where you can be contacted.
Please submit your poem in the body of the email. No attachments or links will be open.
Prizes:
First Place: $300 Second Place: $150 Third Place: $75
Funding for the prizes comes from my royalties.
If you do not have a PayPal account, please open one.
All winners will be featured on my blog. So will those who finish in the following places: 4, 5 and 6.
It is my hope that the winners will use part of their prizes to buy two or three books of their favorite fellow poets or novelists in order to help our literary community strive. If you do so, please let us know what you bought.
How the selection will be made?
The selection method is similar to that of a double-blind peer review: the reviewer doesn’t know the identity of the author, and vice-versa.
To achieve that I will do the following:
Create a master document with all submissions. Remove the name of the authors and replace them with numbers.
Create a second document with the name of the authors and their assigned numbers.
I will not participate in the process of determining the winners. Winners will be determined by two of your peers.
However, I will disclose a piece of information and deviate a bit from the fully double-blind process: the editor of Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Brian Geiger, will be one of the reviewers.
The winners will be announced in mid-October. I will update you periodically.
Thank you to everyone who already submitted.
To the future winners: please remember to spread love in our community and buy some books written by your WP favorite authors.
green, you smell with your tongue your thoughts pollinate mine your fingers endanger the sailors a water which opens its lips and drinks them ah, hour of man when did you become the hour of horrors? a book cover reads: Dictionary of Superstitions I see the girl who tears out the heart of the pigeon white feathers and blood spasm under the moon the man she loves will marry her in the street of the tall Cyprus trees and small mandarins we meet you give me a pigeon blood ruby superstition, I think of dying dying without you knowing me I touch with my cheeks the walls that you touched adrenalized you think of me your skin calls my name
love dark love with pins in his heart the pigeon still flies
Below please find the review of my poetry collection, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, in San Francisco Book Review.
“The series transports us on a journey of love as much as it delivers us a thematically diverse set of emotions. This is a superb collection.”
Bobbie Peyton
Please read the entire review here.
in this pink summer of Jaipur dressed in silk and in monsoonal dances choked by smoke forgotten by lovers the nuances in which you speak my name sound hollow
and the little girl who has only a grain of rice
continue reading here
Thank you again to everyone who bought my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, available on Amazon here. The book has been a bestseller under Poetry About Love for quite a while including yesterday and the day before yesterday.
The following is another review, one among many, done on an online book club by another reviewer whom I do not know.
Excerpt:
“This is a mesmerizing collections of poems, ranging from love poems and writings in form of prose poems. This book brings back old memories, it re-ignites the long gone fire of love within the reader. It has an amazing effect on the reader as one reads the poems, one by one….With an excellent lovely language and lavish imagination, Gabriela ignites a fantastic mind full of emotions….I rate this book 4 out 4 stars. It makes me want to write poems. It is an inspiration, an entertainment and a lively way of educating and reigniting your fire of love. I quote a line in one of the poems,” we desperately want to love, to possess each other, caught in a perpetual rush to justify our existence.” It really makes sense and will make sense till the end of time...”
Inspiring reviewers, people who I do not know, and people who I know, is an honor.
