Lines in Opposition

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Lines in Opposition</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> discovers truths without abstractions.  Images and details endorse the hope that marriages might secure Love within families-fathers mothers children friends.  Maureen Sherbondy recreates a Past that disappears and reappears with every syllable like a dozer leveling walls inside a house we are invited to enter:  one big room shudders with longings for humanity to harmonize elegiac songs of togetherness.</span></p><p><br></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Shelby Stephenson</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> poet laureate of North Carolina (2015-2018) ; author of </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Slavery and Freedom on Paul's Hill</em></p><p><br></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Lines in Opposition </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>is an apt title for Maureen Sherbondy's collection of observant reflective and sometimes acerbic poems. The lines are forthright and the strategic dissonance makes a music suggestive of klezmer: stimulating energetic no-holds-barred fun-serious fun. These pieces woke me up. Some will keep me awake.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Fred Chappell</strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Poet Laureate of North Carolina (1997-2002)</span></p>