Mezzaluna: Selected Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780819579072)

Enchanting and sustaining poems by the first Poet Laureate of New Zealand

Mezzaluna gathers work from Michele Leggott's nine books of poetry. As reviewer David Eggleton writes: "Leggott shows us that the ordinary is full of marvels which . . . stitched, flow together into sequences and episodes that in turn form an ongoing serial, or bricolage: a single poem, then, rejecting exactness, literalism, naturalism in favor of resonance, currents, patterns of ebb and flow." In complex lyrics, sampling thought and song, voice and vision, Leggott creates lush textured soundscapes. Her poetry covers a wide range of topics rich in details of her New Zealand life, full of history and family, lights and mirrors, the real and the surreal. She focuses on appearance and disappearance as modes of memory, familial until we lose sight of that horizon line and must settle instead for a series of intersecting arcs. Leggott writes with tenderness and courage about the paradoxes of losing her sight and remaking the world in words.

on white you fall
into line
her voice fills
the ground
potato cuts
the sun
dries paints
the deck prints
shapes shadows
of oranges
green
'cyan and
magenta'
sail
your picnic
sea
into the eye
land crimson
lemons
hand me
the moon
risen rode
rose ride
white
out to see