“Poets Jan Zlotnik Schmidt and Tana Miller have reflected upon American artist Joseph Cornell’s life and works to create their own literary “Cornell boxes.” Each poem is a stand-alone piece of art, but when collected here in their volume, Joseph Cornell: The Man Who Loved Sparrows (Kelsey Books, 2024), the poems create a gallery show examining the artist’s biography and imagery. And with a keen eye, these two poets explore their own personal connection with Cornell’s mysterious world. It’s an insightful, unique book for both the readers of literature and art history.”
I wrote the above blurb for this book, but it doesn’t do justice to the layered, thoughtful, and often times emotive content of the book. It is a study of art, an artist’s life and the two poets who engage with Cornell’s mysterious, surreal and whimsical shadow boxes: some hidden behind the mists of myth while others open you up to vibrant daylight. These poems offer the same journey. And well worth the read for the art and literary lover.
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Read 2 poems from this book here on Lightwood. Scroll to our Search Button and enter the authors’ names.
Reviewer Laurence Carr is the publisher of Lightwood Magazine.
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Tana Miller, during a thirty-year teaching career, authored arts curriculum guides for her school district, co-founded and facilitated a grade 5-8 annual literary magazine, presented whole language workshops in Hudson Valley schools and at the New York State Reading Conference. Tana co-founded and participated as a volunteer for ten years at a book group at Danbury Federal Prison for Women in Danbury, Connecticut. Her poetry has been published in several feminist journals and in A Woman’s Voice; Slant of Light (Codhill Press); An Apple in Her Hand (co-author, Codhill Press), Rethinking the Ground Rules (co-author, Mediacs Books). She has taught creative writing as well as memoir writing at Life Spring Institute, Saugerties New York. Tana cannot remember one day in her life when she didn’t spend some time reading. She also considers her flock of eleven grandchildren as the most interesting people she knows. Jan Zlotnik Schmidt is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita at SUNY New Paltz in the Department of English where she taught autobiography, creative writing, American and contemporary literature, women’s Literature, and Holocaust literature courses. Her work has been published in many journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Broadkill Review, Cream City Review, Home Planet News, Kansas Quarterly, Memoir (and), Vassar Review, and Westchester Review. Her work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize Series. She has had two volumes of poetry published by the Edwin Mellen Press (We Speak in Tongues, 1991; She had this memory, 2000) and two collections of autobiographical essays, Women/Writing/ Teaching (SUNY Press, 1998) and Wise Women: Reflections of Teachers at Mid-Life, coauthored with Dr. Phyllis R. Freeman (Routledge, 2000). In addition, she coauthored with Laurence Carr an anthology of women’s writing from the Hudson Valley: A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley (Codhill, 2013), which won the USA Best Book Award for an anthology. Her poetry books include: The Earth Was Still (Finishing Line Press); Hieroglyphs of Father-Daughter Time (Word Temple Press); Foraging for Light (Finishing Line Press); and her chapbook about the life of Bess Houdini, Over the Moon Gone: The Vanishing Act of Bess Houdini (Palooka Press). She has been a frequent reader of her poetry at venues in the Hudson Valley.
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