Description
Clela Reed’s chapbook Silk is as captivating and strong as silk itself. At times ephemeral, at times sturdy, Reed weaves history, myth and dream in poems that lead the reader on a journey from Ancient China to the battlefields of WWII and beyond. Silk teaches us the dark mysteries of creativity’s cocoon, opening to the light of what […] shimmers and becomes a poem. — Julia Caroline Knowlton author of the Café of Unintelligible Desire and the forthcoming One Clean Feather Like a bolt of fabric unrolling, each one of these poems scrolls from one to the next, one long sigh of truth / which in time unfurls. The epigraph of the first poem, With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown could be an epigraph for the entire book, as each poem unfolds into the next one, the whole becoming more than the sum of its parts. Reed is obsessed (in a good way) with silk and its various uses, from parachutes to biomedical batteries. She treats her subject in a variety of forms (pantoum, ghazal, villanelle), but always keeps her eyes on the luminous thread, spun from unraveled cocoons: Silk. Say it again and again, and yards of shimmering fabric, undulations of light, rivers of color in shades of jewels slip over your shoulders, — Barbara Crooker, author of The Book of Kells and Some Glad Morning In the poems of Silk, Clela Reed offers a fascinating view of the history and cultural importance of silk through the ages, interwoven with personal details and insight. Her poems reflect an astonishing range of poetic forms, a fine sensitivity to the economic aspects of silk, the wealth and power it signifies, and its adornment of the human form. — Hugh Ruppersburg, author of books and articles on American literature and film and editor of the Georgia Voices literary anthologies
