Word Songs and Whimsies
A Nest of Poems and Verse
- Arts & Literature
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2020
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Publisher's Description
Reading Word Songs and Whimsies is like taking a ride on a magical tandem bicycle: the author pedals and steers, and the reader travels behind, viewing the sights selected by the author. Your tour brings you to the violent ward of a mental hospital in the 1950s and (sixty years later) to a farmer with a rebellious billy goat. Along the way you examine flowers, clouds, and trees--and you pause to consider the songs of the tree toad and the cricket. You speed past pictures of the sins of youth, and you stop to examine portraits of old age, framed with fear and faith. Ragged, struggling, and saintly people appear as you push along, and at intervals you have time for rest and reassurance as you pause before wayside shrines depicting the love of Jesus. Sometimes a scene is touched with humor or pathos--or even with a pinch of irony; and sometimes a misty picture wants a second look. Always the motion of the verse and the sounds of the poetry help to make your journey smooth.
Endorsements (2)
“Haan writes free verse, blank verse, but is also a playful rhymester, and I frequently found myself chuckling as I read his rhyming poems. Rhymed poems are a rare commodity in contemporary poetry so it is a treat to encounter Haan’s. . . . Good poems can make us gasp, make us ‘see feelingly,’ touch something deep inside us. Ray Haan has poems here that can do that to you.”
“In a time in which words are too often used as weapons, Word Songs and Whimsies is a delightful reminder of the beauty and playfulness of language. Ray Haan invites the reader to imagine each poem as a synthetic person; this collection introduces a host of pleasant companions with whom the reader may relax, reminisce, smile, and wonder. The poems are truly good for heart and head.”
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