Altarpieces

<p><center>Fire���ies at dawn. . .<br> Winged essences charred bodies still on ���re.</center></p> <p>This evocative poetry-essay collection issues a call for a renewed embracement of the reader's own expressive self. We've each a persona to hear --- a voice to resonate through silences of night and the noises of everyday. Life is a mystery hard to crack. We bang it like a door and strum it like a lyre until it opens some new portal through which the voice can authentically sound-out the truths of being human. That's the happening of this book.</p> <p> Altarpieces have always been artistic creations to conceive life's sacred space. This book follows that tradition if rather untraditionally. These pieces speak to hear life on one's own terms; from one's own altar and cathedral. This gathering created a poet-self identity --- called 'Apo'kstrophes'. The essays join with the poems to conceive poetry and the spiritual quest with a renewed existential-eco-romantic perspective; sounding that quest with both feet grounded on worldly other Planet Earth.</p> <p>The challenge to grasp life at the core is a wrenching-wrestling match with the Other that ever-present dimension of poetry on life's path. --- Joining philosophical play with the authenticity of word-pieces as true orients O'Kelly's book with many poets helping along the way has taken up that challenge with unflinching creativity. Want a spiritual adventure? Fly! Take the ride!</p> <p><center>Oh the ride! Fins spurred in shivers of hide.<br> Life's dearness reined in the roll of the tide.</center></p>