Autobiographical poem on rain

Odes to Joy and Sorrow

A Review by Michael Magee

As beautiful to the touch as this book is, Lana Hechtman Ayers' work is not only full of velvet wishes but sharp remembrances of friends and favorite historical figures.

There are tributes to Patricia Fargnoli (a friend and mentor), John Lennon, Van Gogh and the ever-turning color wheel of life. She reminisces about her father, mother, brother, but these poems are also descants and descendants of other poems.

They are full of the ache of loneliness, but are never loveless.

The poems in Lana Hechtman Ayers' The Autobiography of Rain explore the healing powers of art and nature in a world that is as rife with grief as it is as ripe.

The poems in Lana Hechtman Ayers' The Autobiography of Rain explore the healing powers of art and nature in a world that is as rife with grief as it is as ripe.

'Song of the Rain' is an autobiographical poem.

The poems in Lana Hechtman Ayers' The Autobiography of Rain explore the healing powers of art and nature in a world that is as ripe with beauty as it is rife.

Lana Hechtman Ayers '96 (New England, MA) published a new, national book award-nominated poetry collection The Autobiography of Rain.

I see this collection as catharsis; there is so much about grief that.

The writing is best when it bites and has that bittersweet taste of W.H. Auden's “The More Loving One,” where these lines from “Strong Verbs” would fit in well:

All through the night, she left us, the stars
failed to notice, went on twinkling
I lay in the lawn chair in the yard
wondering if life after life is possible .

. .

/ /

. . . requires allowing the world
to pierce with arrows