In this beautiful dialogue between luminous poems and colorful mixed media and acrylic narratives of perpetual discovery and emotive energy, the less explored depths of our hearts and souls seek connection with all that changes or evolves, such as with a bird or a mountain or a loved one. The dialogue does not search for answers but instead embraces what arrives on wings or in dreams, with the moon's blessing, with our hopes and our fears. It is the catalyst that gives rise to the stories that create us and is a metaphoric Jacob's ladder of possibility that goes wherever the imagination, like a secret tide, takes us. Wherever we arrive, we have not yet been. There, once again, we are home.
William O'Daly, author of Yarrow and Smoke and translator of Pablo Neruda's Book of Twilight
When I was a boy one of my favorite books was George MacDonald's enchanting "At the Back of the North Wind". 'I do not write for children, ' MacDonald said, 'but for the child-like, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.' These short poems by Alice Pero, along with collages by Vera Campion, invoke that same sensibility-a universe where birds, flowers, color, a lightness of spirit, have more truth and value than one's bank account, no matter how full, and, like a scene from a Taoist scroll in which a monk ascends a rock-strewn mountain, where one is free to be.
Peter Ludwin, whose most recent book, Gone to Gold Mountain, was nominated for both a Washington State Book Award and an American Book Award.
When you immerse yourself into "Beyond Birds and Answers," you are immediately impressed by its sentient reverence for the efficacy of art, not only as transformative but as a "function of spirit." There is nothing short of an aura of mastery in the pairing of Alice Pero's evocative poetry with Vera Campion's arresting images, two accomplished artists, who inspire in us the lush subtleties of synesthetic response, resulting in sudden moments of enlightenment where "colors sing" and birds are teaching us their "language of flight." The remarkable duality of visions offered by their collaboration evokes in us the synergistic power of image creations that flourish on the page like burning fires reflecting off the mirrors of our consciousness. Each poem/ painting offers up a world that transforms into insights as magical as the congruence between earth and sea, moon and stars. Such magic will surely give comfort to your imagination- and inspiration.
James Ragan, poet and author of The Hunger Wall and The Chanter's Reed and Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California
