East West and Beyond

Ms. Dycs vivid and moving poems take the reader on a journey of mind body and spirit through geographical and cultural distances: from childhood in Detroit with her Polish immigrant grandparents to mid-life in the West among Native Americans. As the title of her poem Paying Attention directs she observes people and landscapes not only with her eyes but with her heart. Her poetry of life and rituals among the Lakota are particularly vibrant. Beyond the transcendent reveals its presence through people and landscapes through-out this collection until in meditative tones Dyc envisions the end in her last quietly stunning poem: I imagine this is how it will be in the end a brightening of a candle in a paper lantern and then a darkness lighter than light. This is a collection to treasure! Joan Gartland reviewer for Library Journal Always its hard to get beyond distance but we try no matter how hard the journey is. Its never a simple matter of crossing the prairie from the Black Hills to more mountains to more prairie. Its mostly the same landscape of the exterior and the interior i.e. whats outside of us and whats inside of us-and what matters is the truth as poet Gloria Dyc shows us excruciatingly in East West and Beyond. Her poems even make us realize what we remember are maps and what we dont remember are maps too! Simon J. Ortiz poet author of Woven Stone Im just a guy from Queens New York but Gloria Dycs Thinning the Herd in this collection speaks to me in its language of herds corrals lactating mares and scarce hay due to drought - because the colts have to be sold to buy hay and pay for a funeral and a boy has to accept this and the mares milk leaks out onto the snow as they walk . . . As always in art its not always things that move us but how people and other living creatures live amongst and react to those things. Morty Sklar The Spirit That Moves Us Press Led not by a hum but by an opera you follow this poet wherever she goes riding on the music trusting every minute in her creation. lily pond editor of Seven Hundred Kisses: A Yellow Silk Book of Erotic Writing (Harper Row San Francisco)