Breaking Light

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A collection of poetry with a introduction by Dr. Miryam Sivan, Professor of Literature, author of Make It Concrete, a novel: “There is a formality in these pages, a reliance on structure to contain the powerful yet often restrained emotions. Light, nature, mourning, and love provide a deep and familiar comfort and stimulation that remain long after we’ve stopped reading.”

Available as: Paperback
Pages: 122
Published: Hamilton Stone Editions (June 30, 2021)

Blurbs

“I spent the day reading one poem after the other, amazed and comforted by what Jane Lazarre has managed to get down in words and musical lines. The poem that struck me perhaps the deepest is Shubert Sinking In, how she manages to link music–that cello, that violin–with the music of words, rising and falling, the exultation of hope amidst the dark despair of our lives–something I have pondered for years, but which Lazarre actually got down on the page in Breaking Light.”

Paul Mariani, author of Ordiinary Time: Poems, and The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modnernity

“Jane Lazarre is one of America’s foremost writers of memoirs, a few of which—among them The Mother Knot and The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter—are seminal works of contemporary non-fiction. She’s also a respected and accomplished novelist. But with Breaking Light— her first full-length volume of poems—Lazarre establishes her impressive bona fides as a poet who has important and urgent things to say and writes about them with a generous heart, depth and admirable craft.”

Jaime Manrique, author of Like This Afternoon Forever

“Jane Lazarre excels in all forms, across multiple genres. Here, in Breaking Light, she gives us poetry as insightful as it is illuminating; poetry that you will want to return to again and again and again.”

Farah Jasmine Griffin, author of Read Until You Understand

The poems in Jane Lazarre’s Breaking Light are dazzling and powerful. Quite an accomplishment to write about bodies in so strong and true a way.”

Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of No Way Out But Through, Poems

“The poems in Breaking Light sing of truth. There is power in words that refuse to let go, as these poems show. Their illumination and clarity insist on not forgetting.”

Beverly Gologorsky, author of Can You Hear The Wind

“I’m struck by the sense of access to the underlife in these beautiful poems, the revelation of patterned interiority, a kind of permission and invitation to cultivate my own.”