Reviewed by Cit Ananda
ekphrastics & eccentricities by M. Ann Reed
Kelsay Books, 2023, 63 pages, $20.00
ISBN 978-1-63980-400-9
Available at www.kelsaybooks.com

On her trek teaching and learning around the world, capturing moments in disparate places such as Wales, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Idaho and Minnesota, M. Ann Reed unveils, through art and idiosyncratic occasions, numerous natural rhythms that die to live anew (“Reintegrating with Earth’s Divine Body She Asks—"). New understandings are the consistent treasure of each turning point, rendering ekphrastics & eccentricities a collection of practical wisdom dressed reverently in language of beauty. This is a collection of poems that celebrates the mystery that helms our course through life.
Each chosen moment unveils a new understanding burning an ember of the event into permanent memory. When the old releases, new is born like waves breaking on the shore in “The Sea” ending their fathoms long journey from the heart of the ocean only to begin again in a fresh direction. Reed’s collection highlights turning points: instances in life when, miraculously and instantaneously, the poet’s heart becomes forever changed as her sea opens against a previously unseen shore in tears / then closes / hugging longer the coastline’s wrinkled / touch.
Throughout the collection, I feel welcomed as the reader to witness these pivotal moments in exquisite intimacy, as if listening over Reed’s shoulder. In “Monet Meets Me at the Minneapolis Art Institute,” the opening poem, Reed discovers herself painted into the canvas, another layer of cerulean blended into the sea, where she realizes refuge on Belle-rock. Her merging is so complete that she turns carefully, as if reluctant to pull herself away from the gossamer film of a lucid daydream that suspends the crash and crags of Monet’s thick strokes of light, to address the speaker who whispered behind her, my soul is in this one.
As she pivots, Reed discovers no one standing behind her and finds, instead, something ineffable, changeless yet changing, illumined all around her. In that moment blossoms the fullness of her newest insight: right here everything / where no one’s footsteps leave / where some One remains to complete a rainbow. Witnessing, we are transported with Reed into an awareness of unity, shimmery and dream-like, yet wide awake as she asks us to remain present with her, so we do not miss the opportunity.
This is how we enter the book and the sacred chamber of meaning that Reed erects from two potent substrates: the movement of art through our soul and the revelations exposed by moments of awakening to insight in our lives. Each turning point, such as the one in “Call Me Perdita,” uncovers, with uncanny precision, the way life hovers in delicate balance, suspended on the fulcrum of insight and that which inspires insight, inviting us to contemplate the exchange between the two...
grounded into the vibrant circulatory system of the creation pregnant mary layered monolith Stonehenge elusive unlocking shadows ... I accept your rainbowed weight drawing us up into blue arms holding our firm freckled flight
Here, buoyed with a colorful lightness of being, we land, guided by Reed’s finesse, into the arms of the vast blue to be held firmly with all our freckles and flaws by the outreach of creation itself. In the feather lightness of Reed’s words, we can rest heavily in the arms of this foundation, another layer of becoming unveiled.
Covering many subject matters, Reed leans into the magic of Monet, her long love of Shakespeare, family and health concerns, career choice, architecture, beloved dogs and the marvelous seeding of the cosmos to expose her own ethereal artistry. Her word-choices envelop the reader as shawls warming the shoulders of life. Her keen attention to subtlety across life’s canvas, enfolded in each eccentrically aligned poem, each verse a new nebula realizing herself (“Planting Cosmos”) affords a glimpse of eternity in the sharing of one worthy moment.
Reed invites us to join her in celebrating and lamenting, honoring and pondering, riding the rhythmic wave of vitality, a vast and myriad life force that shines through all the bodies that cannot last (“When Lost Sighting Polaris—"). This collection will sing to all prodigals becoming eccentrics (“Kindly Cautioned and Knowing”) as well as their more disciplined peers. It evokes a desire to engage life more fully, to witness more intensely and to surrender to the magical element that suspends us in lucid dreaming and awakens when we stand before stirring art in reverence or are silenced in a moment of unusual exchange, renewing awe. She leaves us in her final poem, “To Begin Again,” inviting a deeper inquiry, with the questions:
how could we be
so blessed – so bewitched – so bewildered?
I am honored to follow Reed’s inward pointings that reveal the indescribable nature of life’s varied turning points.
Reviewer Bio:
Cit Ananda’s poetry is inspired by direct experience, captured in moments between perception when the mind falls quiet. She will tell you she catches poetry on the winds of the universe. She has a DDiv. in yogic philosophy. Her work can be found in The Mountain Path, Tiferet Journal, Amethyst Review, and Medicine and Meaning, among others, and her full-length mystic poetry book called When Silence Speaks: Messages from the Heart.