A wonderful patchwork of colorful musings, reflections, and illuminations
Beyond Temples
Poetry by Martina Reisz Newberry
6 x 9 paperback; 98 pages
ISBN: 979-8-9865052-6-8; $19.00
available for early orders
Praise for Beyond Temples
Endorsed by Seb Doubinsky
Martina Reisz Newberry’s latest collection, Beyond Temples is a wonderful patchwork of colorful musings, reflections and illuminations on the everyday path to wisdom. A catalogue of beautiful and sometimes surprising images and situations, it reminds us that poetry is both looking outward and inward. Nothing gets illuminated by itself only. A precious book, a necessary book.
—Seb Doubinsky, author of Mountains, Spontaneous Combustions, and The Word For Poetry Is Poetry
Endorsed by Diana Rosen
Martina Reisz Newberry’s newest book, Beyond Temples, is painted with melancholy and remembrance that implores us “to read the spaces between the words as well as the text” to gain the deepest understanding of this wildly intelligent treatise on living long and well. This poet has learned how to deeply and widely “maneuver through tunnel and maze” that is this world. She gives us warnings, against silence about injustice and war; avers that “we should be screaming.” A rich read, to be approached with the same wonder the poet approaches her world, reminding us all that, “You have to be very quick to catch that which is sacred and still alive."
—Diana Rosen, author of High Stakes & Expectations
Endorsed by Beth Copeland
As its intriguing title suggests, the poems in Martina Reisz Newberry’s Beyond Temples transcend predictable modes of worship, venturing into a spiritual realm where “The world / appears to you illuminated / as an Aert de Gelden painting.” The first poem “Bethel” is a foretelling of what lies ahead: “I spoke of my doomed / country, I chanted the names / of God.” Drawing from many religious traditions, Newberry explores various portals to sacred space. In “Posers” the speaker doesn’t listen to gurus but watches The Weather Channel, finding “comfort in the apparitions of /tidal waves.” It’s as if Newberry is channeling these lyric poems from beyond: “We are not winning the war, / said the light./ We present Death with / countless bodies.” These are timely poems—sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes humorous, always surprising!
—Beth Copeland, author of Selfie with Cherry, and Blue Honey, winner- 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize