Crossroads

An artist as well as a poet Yala Korwin has many colors on her palette. In her latest book Crossroads she walks us through her gallery of words with poems about nature poetry wart war immigration and grandchildren. In Connections she assigns the color black not to mourning but to musicians/in formal attire. When I am No Longer pictures the author returning to earth as snow sparkle or wind whisper. Her opening poem America! America! records the fluttering of the immigrant's heart on approaching New York harbor. And her powerful sonnet Widows plumbs the wound that never each to her cold nest with her secret load /where no one waits where silence has the floor. The last word of this ambitious book is hope.Carolyn Raphael----------------------------I hang on tight between heaven and hell writes Yala Korwin a poet thoroughly grounded in the pleasures as well as agonies of living. Aging loss and mortality may stalk these pages but the refining fires of her private/busy/crematorium produce instead of despair an indomitable wisdom joy and acceptance. Along with deep awareness of life's many heartbreaks and compassionate understanding permeates these poems in endless variations whether it be taking in a stray cat wishing Samuel Beckett well or being glad for daughter's growing independent life even if it diminishes one's own.George Northrup PHD President of Fresh Meadows Poets----------------------------This new collection by poet Yala Korwin is cause for profound celebration. Like every work by this highly gifted poet and visual artist it is a gift to readers who yearn for the clarity the lyricism and the deliberate appeal to both mind and heart missing in so much that calls itself poetry today. The painter is evident in these poems in their close observation and love of detail; so are the wife widow and mother the survivor and the intelligent multilingual reader familiar with other cultures lost beside the crossroads of war and immigration.Rhina P. Espaillat12 Charron DriveNewburyport MA 01950