Yes, Laura Stamp's poetry is all personal, the personal joy of her relationship with her cats. Her love for her cats pours out the gentle flow of words.
Laura has told us little about her background. We do know she was a "Swamp Deb," quite an honor in her state of South Carolina commemorating Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, whose irregular tactics grabbed the haughty British Lion by the tail. Small wonder Laura developed such a personal affection for cats.
I have accused Laura of having the Huguenot blood. Laura has a feel for language that is hard to attain in English which tends toward stark directness without a natural lyric or meter. Few reach Laura's mastery of poetry in English, though many offer poor pretense.
The beauty of poetry lies in the stretching of the language to allow sound to carry meaning. Few writers recognize this concept. Laura celebrates it in every line. "Listen can you hear it* * *?" Every Morning I Stop.
And Laura is expert in stretching language to its full potential. Storms don't hit; they "snak[e] toward us* * * (Hurricane Season) and "christen the city with a coronation of rain." It's the Second Week. "The forest shivers with shadows" The Last Week of September. "Lightening mulches the sky with leaves of fire." Power. A silence falls "like stain glass saints." 98 Degrees.
Laura's poetry draws meaning from its tones:
As if I were a painter
craving a world etched
in fresh color
Sundance
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Laura's cats are very present, "their toes tingling to* * *mischief," (Sparrow), "curled against one another like ebony cupcakes" (Three Cats Collapse) as if* * *a pool of mahogany oil* * *" (Friday), "fully hidden* * *[like] a black bear wintering in the dimmest cave." (This Isn't A Poem) Yet Laura is always ready to adopt "a new family of strays" (I'll Never Forget) Cats are precious to Laura, "as sweet as summer* * *as soft as mink." (Daybreak)
Surely Laura finds cats:
as white as the Spirit
that washes away
the soul's shadowed
corners in a baptism of
light
Divine
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Yet as much as Laura may "yearn for bird song" (Greed), cats are feral creatures. Other critters may be "grateful for the glass* * *separa[tion]* * *from the paws of [the] cat." Busy With Happiness. Even celebrating the cat in rhyme and cat-minding do come into conflict:
Typing everyday //
* * *with //
office cats requires //
special skills
Typing
|
Year of the Cat
is published by
Artemesia Books
Rocky Mount, NC $12.95
You're well advised to place your order right away.
"The sky welcomes
* * *but it waits [not]
* * *this time of year."
Ladies in Waiting
|
jd collins
Laura's Poetry Un - CAT - egorical,
