Product Details:
ISBN: 0-9765711-2-9
Publisher: Singularity Press
Year of Publication: 2006
Format: cloth cover
Page Count: 90
Upcoming Readings:
Austin Community College
Austin, Texas
March 7, 2006
Center for the Performing Arts
Paradise Valley Community College
Phoenix, Arizona
March 30, 2006
Clearwater Public Library--Countryside Branch
Clearwater, Florida
April 20, 2006
Praise for Lois Roma-Deeley's NorthSight:
I remember as a child, watching my great grandmother make a passage
from the sofa to a chair. It was a hard landing. Yet, she composed
herself and smiled. I looked around me and knew that only I had recognized
a real heroism. After this, firemen did not impress me.
I’d forgotten
all this until reading tonight these new, brilliant poems by Lois Roma-Deeley.
These poems are tough, brave, but also hold an almost physical balance
against human suffering.
—Norman Dubie
NorthSight is above all a book of lives. Of the
poet's own life, but not only that. Of women's lives, but not only
that. Of human lives, but not only that. Time and history, the transcendental,
even a bead of sweat are given their voice in Lois Roma-Deeley's vital
chorus, whose song is of hard-won resurrection and the unlikely survival
of hope.
—Jane Hirshfield
From Midwest Book Review
NorthSight showcases the ultimately hopeful poetry of Lois
Roma-Deeley who draws upon the imagery of war heroes and tattoo girls,
day laborers and monks, rapists and prostitutes, Italian immigrants
and waitresses, bikers and firemen, the uncommitted, the confused,
and the slightly insane, to craft memory haunting verse of a dangerous
and sometimes mystical world. War Widow: "She's
crying. All night she prays God give me a sign./Is he alive? Somewhere
on a desert island?/Eating coconuts? Drinking palm wine?/ She touches
her stomach. Eight months ago/they were dancing in Kansas,/the USO
banner sagging underneath the heat/of their kisses. The trumpets
playing: Begin
the Beguine."
From The Comstock Review—Book Reviews
** Two fine collections, Rules
of Hunger (Star Cloud Press, 2003) and
NorthSight (Singularity Press, 2006), have come from the
pen of poet Lois Roma-Deeley. The common themes of both books are
lives lived in time and history, stories of family, rich in its Sicilian
traditions. To quote poet Jane Hirshfield: "Time and history,
the transcendental, even a bead of sweat, are given their voice in
Lois Roma-Deeley’s
vital chorus, whose song is of hard-won resurrection and the unlikely
survival of hope." www.StarCloudPress.com to
order either book. Please note the second book will not be out until
2006.
From Barbara Crooker's review in The Pedestal
Magazine
These are indeed words for our time, words to travel by. Throw away the charts,
the road maps. Things are growing dark, and we can no longer count on faith,
or the stars, to guide us. Still, there is hope at the end of the road. Yes,
there is suffering, but these are survivors, and just as the monk in “This" “sees
the blood on the stone / floor, a star burst he can copy, / something he can
use" so does Lois Roma-Deeley, who takes these stories into her body, and
makes art out of them.
Entire review can be found at:
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/Content/cb.asp?cbid=4808
Awards:
The 2005 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards
Passaic County Community College
http://pccc.edu/poetry/winners/2005/2005_Alen_Ginsberg.html
2005 Paumanok Poetry Awards
Farmingdale State University
http://www.farmingdale.edu/CampusPages/.../paumanokwinners.html
Third Prize, Emily Dickinson Poetry Award—Universities
West Press, 2004
"Bougainvillaea and TV" (poem included in NorthSight)
Judge's Comments:
This poet
makes such achingly effective use of the plainstyle, which fits the
ethical dilemma of the speaker (who is truly a speaker for us all, "useless human beings"). How helpless the speaker
feels in the face of the war, yet has "done nothing," "watches
TV," is concerned for creature comforts, "sips Temple of
Heaven Tea," uses a heating pad. The tensions in the poem culminate
in the dreadfully sad yet brilliant epistemology at the end. First
is the tension between the illusion of information, provided by TV,
and the speaker's professed lack of knowledge: the city, Baghdad, "the
name of which I remember only from childhood." Then there is the
tension between the childhood of the speaker and the dead child. The
child on Long Island is playing a game of pretend, perhaps hide and
seek, perhaps a war drama. It doesn't matter; we are inside the consciousness
that imagines both that it is nice to be warm and "pull the covers
over one's feet" and the terror and discomfort of "a prisoner
of war." We are inside a child's consciousness at the same time
we observe a dead child in the dirt. We can't put together how "the
rain brings the Bougainvillaea / into sharp focus" while the pundit
on TV "moves her lips." Through the speaker's pronouncement "Now
I know I will never understand a thing," we confront our culpability,
uselessness, and, perhaps, our responsibility.
—Judge: Aliki Barnstone
About the Author:
Lois Roma-Deeley's first full-length poetry collection, Rules of Hunger (Star
Cloud Press), earned her a National Book Award nomination. She is a 2004
Emily Dickinson Poetry Award Competition winner (Universities West Press),
third place, as well as the 2005 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards Competition
(Passaic Community College) winner, third place and Editor's Choice. In addition,
she was a Finalist for the international Paumanok Poetry Contest (Visiting
Writers Program at Farmingdale State University). Further, her poetry earned
her an Arizona Governor's Arts Awards nomination, a Pushcart nomination as
well as two Arizona Library Association Author Award nominations. She has
been published in six national anthologies, including the American Book Award
winner Looking for Home (Milkweed Editions). Roma-Deeley's poetry is published
in various literary journals nationwide, including Water~Stone, Iris,
Faultine, Italian Americana, Columbia Poetry Review, Controlled Burn, Sow's
Ear (competition
finalist), Confluence, The Comstock Review, Paterson Review and many others.
She has also published poetry reviews in several literary journals. In 2004,
she was one of four featured poets at the Chicago Humanities Festival (Artistic
Dialogue venue) and in 2005 was once again a featured poet in the CHF partner
program with ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation. She has received fellowship
residencies from the Ragdale Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. Roma-Deeley
has taught poetry workshops at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Currently,
she is Poet-in-Residence at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix,
Arizona. She received her Ph.D. from the Union Institute and University and
an MFA from Arizona State University. NorthSight is her second collection
of poetry. Roma-Deeley has given many poetry readings and presented numerous
creative writing workshops throughout the country.
