Notes From Refuge

There are several women in the poems of Lana Maht Wiggins and I am attracted to each and every one of them - their sufferings their joys their fears and the sheer elegance they display when thrusting their feelings through window panes of splintered glass. I have discovered New Orleans in these poems. Her Notes from Refuge ooze beauty sensuality and a glimpse of hope that make you want to cling to life as I do to each page of a book I can no longer do without. Jacques Sirgent author of Le Tombeau de Drakula and Euryale de Mortsauve: Les Derniere des Bathory The poems in Lana Maht Wiggins Notes from Refuge are the underpinnings of a powerful narrative. The work is haunting and arresting; its clear-voiced beauty is also rare and compelling. Darrell Bourque Ph.D Louisiana Poet Laureate and author of Plainsongs Burnt Water Suite and The Blue Boat Like the great storms that preside as its formidable governing metaphors it proves that real refuge demands above all that one first experience the world as terrible beautiful provocation: here we seek refuge not from danger but from an overwhelming devastation of hope. Jerry McGuire Ph.D poet and author of The Flagpole Dance and Vulgar Exhibitions Lana Maht Wiggins poems force the reader into a chthonic mental landscape where the demonic escapes between lines. Eves antithesis whose name is Bathory or those nameless teeming shameless from the page awaiting nomination reflect the dark feminine in us all. Rhonda D. Robison poet and English Professor University of Louisiana . . . a scarlet and dark absinthe worthy of Baudelaire and Rimbaud . Hana Myo Shin poet and author of Le Noir et le Rouge Lencre de Feu and Jeux de Dames Quarter-moons accompany these poems . . . a true poet who made me fly through her art across redefined sunsets suicidal obituaries and daily life revelations with authentic ways of experience and sensitivity of darkness and bright. Miguel A. Arellano author of Vampiros en el Espejo and The Pact Several of Lana Maht Wiggins poems can be considered as gothic; they speak of melancholy sorrow and the beautiful sadness that life must contain so as not to be considered totally despairing. Romanticism and passion at their best. Celine Guillaume author of Le Serment de Cassandra La Perle dEternité Le Puits aux Marguerites and La Litanie des Anges