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Lori Bank is an award-winning poet, essayist, fiction writer, and photographer, and the author of There Is No Time (2011). Her credits include The New York Post and Village Voice (photography), Primary Stages (company photographer), Brooklyn Graphic (arts reviewer), Chrysalis (poetry), Connecticut Review (essay), Conversing with Mystery-CD Anthology for Washington State Hospices (poetry), Sedona Centennial Poetry Contest (honorable mention). Currently, she lives in Sedona, Arizona and is at work on a novel, Grandma Ethel’s Braid. You can reach Lori through her publisher, Dancing Dakini Press, www.dancingdakinipress.com.
Reviewed by Rich Follett for Readers' Favorite
The Lizard and Other Poems by Lori Bank, illustrated by Naomi C. Rose, hums and crackles with elemental life. Whether the subject is lizards, dragonflies, magnolias, mythology, the human heart or the emotional life of werewolves, there is a subliminal electricity - a connectivity - crackling through these observations and portraits which speaks to the oneness of all life and the triumph of the spirit over the ravages of time and death. The relatively calm surface of this collection belies the thrum of vision and wisdom beneath. Much in the same way that one can meditate upon a tree and receive the gift of enlightenment years after the fact, these poems plant seeds that will surely grow and bloom in places and ways the reader has yet to imagine. From Yulan Magnolia: “If I study the blossoms/like jewels on a dowager’s hands/the old wisdom speaks …”
Elements of Navajo, Japanese, classical Greek, Jewish, and ancient Mayan culture illuminate the wisdom of these impeccably crafted verses, as do Naomi C. Rose’s sensitively rendered illustrations, which capture both the spirit and the tone of Bank’s universality. As with all well-written poetry, every word, every image is carefully chosen and perfectly placed, imbuing the finished collection with a timelessness and ease that will speak across lifestyles and generations. In vision, voice, and vitality, The Lizard and Other Poems by Lori Bank is the poetic reflection of a soul in complete harmony with its surroundings. To spend a lingering afternoon caught up in its spell will surely uplift and inspire even the most world-weary readers.
