Self-Portrait with Thorns New Release Beginning with an exhortation as

Beginning with an exhortation as finely calibrated as clockwork—”dear reader I’m trapped/beating on the other/page’s side”—and proceeding in filigreed language that is at once sparse and lush

” echoing Simone de Beauvoir’s “One is not born

But this speaker measures her identity by expanding metaphorical margins to include many objects in the natural universe

painter and poet Stephen Linsteadt opens us to the savour of life

—Marilyn Kallet

Self-Portrait with Thorns New Release Beginning with an exhortation asGail Goepferts ravishing collection, Self Portrait with Thorns, stands as stunning testimony to the power of art to salve the wounded and to serve as a durable filament connecting us one to another across the chasms of time, space, and circumstance. These poems join in lyrical conversation with the life and paintings of Frida Kahlo, the mirrored pains and losses of Kahlo and the speaker having tuned these womens instruments to the same pitch. In poems