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Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines
Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines is Diane Frank's latest collection of poems.
(order info.)
Praise for Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines
"In this new and startling collection, Diane Frank’s poems
transcend not just genres but entire dimensions. When
she speaks to J.S. Bach, she really means it and when Bach
speaks back, she listens — entirely — the way certain moths
perceive sound via their whole body, even their wings. How is
this accomplished? It will seem to come through the poems
themselves — their music, tonal qualities and subjects, yet
it goes even deeper as it pushes up like duende through the
soles of your feet. The voice is declarative, emphatic, spirit
driven. She will tell you, ' When a buffalo enters your dream, /
listen for arpeggio hooves, / the weight of music, / a copper
moon / above a vanishing prairie ' and you will, you must listen."
— Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder
Radio Host, KPFK’s Poets Café
"Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines is a feast for the
senses, the images conjuring sights, sounds and tastes that
metamorphosize into larger concepts. However, when Diane
Frank introduces music into her poetry, it takes on a depth,
both joyful and painful, that is, in my opinion, her finest work.
Bravo!"
— Jill Rachuy Brindel
Cellist, San Francisco Symphony
"In Diane Frank’s Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, this
reader finds himself embraced by trees. While hiking in Muir
Woods, the poet sees, 'Lichens and gnomes / in the bark of
giant redwoods, / ribbons of brown and pink, / striations
remembered from earlier times.' Diane Frank’s observations
link us with the essence of life, with earth. We are penetrated
by a music we can both hear and see. The sensuousness of life
is accentuated in dances we feel from our most primal bodily
memories."
— Rustin Larson, author of Pavement,
Winner of the 2016 Blue Light Poetry Prize
"How deep is the music of the spheres locked up inside our
earthly, material existence? So deep, says Diane Frank, that it
could take a lifetime ‘to learn the cello’s toning to what I hear.’ So close to the surface that it’s present in the sound of icefall
or a mountain bird drunk with song.
In Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, she takes us on
a journey to unlock that music for her readers — to make the ‘impossible note’ manifest. In these resonant poems, she
takes us to the deep hidden places, and to the transparently
spellbinding surfaces — in search of that ‘music or soundscape,
rising like a flood.’ The journey is sacred and profane — from
the arpeggio of buffalo hooves to the cacophony of an alarm
in a high school classroom during a bomb scare. And through
her poetry, the line between sacred and profane is erased, and
what emerges is the music within. What does she discover in
a field of ice wrapped trees? An ocean of violins. In redwoods,
and the long fingers of ferns? Water music. What does she
discover in a purple balloon held in a small child’s hand? Hearts
filled with musical joy.
Open this book. Listen for the impossible note, for the
musical stuff that binds everything. Before very long, you're
likely to discover, as Diane Frank has, that it’s everywhere— as resonant as the way a string vibrates at the intersection of
bow and memory."
— George Wallace
Writer in Residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace
"Diane Frank is a magician, flying on a cello, wearing black
slinky pants. She walks like a geisha, with a paper umbrella,
unless of course she is riding a tortoise. Buffalos dance out of
Beethoven's arpeggios, with their hooves. Diane Frank invites
you into her dream — Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines,
where a thousand Swiss cows clang their bells for you in the
moonlight. Don’t expect to read this collection of poems and
remain unmoved. You cannot easily wash away the scent of
bear, honey, topaz blue light."
— Midwife Robin Lim, Bali, Indonesia
Author of The Geometry of Splitting Souls
"Diane Frank’s new book, Canon for Bears and Ponderosa
Pines, invites us to transcend and be transformed by an
ecstatic engagement with the natural world — each poem
a lush, primordial garden of flora and fauna, overlaid with
the omnipresent music of the spheres. There is mystery
and surprise with every turn of the page here, lighting up
our senses and perceptions with poems not just inspired by
natural and symphonic music, but invoked and informed by
it. From the poem "Pentagram: Garden Walk," we read: ‘Love
is a whir of hummingbirds, / an open window, / a garden of
passion flowers and wild orchids, / indigo butterflies mating
in a kaleidoscope of wings, / a memory, a dream you suddenly
remember.’ Like Diane Frank’s previous books, this one does
not disappoint, enchanting us with its sensual imagery and
rhythms. As Kim Addonizio writes, "Poetry is not a means to
an end, but a continuing engagement with being alive." After
finishing Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, you will no
doubt feel more alive than when you picked it up."
— Christopher Seid, Author of Age of Exploration
"To be inside these poems is to feel the warmth of the sun
after a violent storm, illuminating the way for a mermaid
to swim through an O’Keeffe cow skull, with a guide book
of wildflowers and a shaman's drum, singing the heartbeat
rhythms of incarnation and ancestry, listening to life as
music, the goose-flesh eroticism of nature’s ceaseless
rhythms, an interpenetrating dream with the shivering
overtones of truth, like stars, the tides, the hunger of the
ants that allows the peonies to blossom. Dickinson said, ‘If I
feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know
that is poetry.’ This is what happens when one encounters
the Rumi-meets-Alice in Wonderland duende of Diane
Frank."
— David Hurlin, Author of Zero Gravity Funk Libido
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