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Her love of poetry began during her youth in New England when she discovered the poetry of Robert Frost. She has been reading poetry her entire life and writing poetry since the 1980s. She is active in small poetry writing groups in Tucson. Her poems have appeared in such publications as Lyrical Iowa, Ekphrastic Review, Sandcutters, The Avocet, The Blue Guitar, Creosote, Crosswinds, Fine Lines,The Raw Art Review, and Beyond Words and in anthologies such as Voices from the Plains, The Very Edge, and Night Forest. Her first chapbook of poetry, Into This Sea of Green: Poems from the Prairie, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. In 2023 Kelsay Books released her collection, Washed by a Summer Rain: Poems from the Desert.. Her new collections published in 2024 are Threads and On Horsebarn Hill. |
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On Horsebarn Hill. ![]() In these searing yet joyous memory poems, Rives takes the reader back on a journey to where it began. “Not a joyous time/the day of my birth, but I was optimistic.” Looking back at her early life on Horsebarn Hill, where “the sky meant everything to me,” she could say “I knew what happy meant.” But in another plaintive poem, recalling the tragic circus fire that had killed hundreds, she writes, “I barely understood that our good fortune in living there/had come from others’ searing sadness … only then did I begin/to feel the heat from life’s burning edge.” Whether it be a poignant meditation on changing crayon colors or “the cobalt waves in my mother’s eyes,” the poet reminds us to look closer and feel the “burning edge” of each moment. —Gene Twaronite, Poet and Author of The Museum of Unwearable Shoes and The Family That Wasn’t: A Fable |
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Thread: A Memoir in Woven Poems. ![]()
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Synopsis
In Thread: A Memoir in Woven Poems, the author reveals connecting filaments of nature, place, family, and friendship over her lifetime. From a "Snow Day" in childhood to years living "In Paris" to the "Blaze" of a southwest desert to being "Called to Stay" in the Midwest to finally moving "Ahead" into retirement, she weaves prose narrative through her poetry. These hybrids capture the transitions of life in a lyric tapestry.
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"Only connect!" wrote E.M. Forster. "Live in fragments no longer." Janet McMillan Rives exemplifies this calling. "I remember connections," she declares, and it's true. Rives' recollections are painterly. She shows us "blue green agave, muted orchid skies at sunrise, subtle pink reflecting off the mountain side, cool cloudless azure skies." But the thread that securely binds together this hybrid of memoir and poetry is Rives' "open-hearted, open-minded" capacity to connect-with history, place, and most of all, people, especially her readers. "There is no one left in my circle who lived through these moments with me, no one with whom to share. So I write," writes Rives. And-lucky us!-we read. We connect. Thread widens the circle of the writer's life to welcome and include anyone fortunate enough to become interwoven with this honest, lyrical book. –Rachel M. Srubas, author of The Desert of Compassion, The Girl Got Up and other books. |
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