An Overdose of Meditation

Irene Mitchell

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In the pages that comprise An Overdose of Meditation, the poet readily confesses that "remembering, supposing, counting, assessing/ is no way to spend the time. It is an overdose/ of meditation." Yet the poet has devised a formula through which she realizes that thoughtful perception is a vital principle of life. The direct way, she says, to the inner fruit is through the interior power of the soul.

Whether the poet is conducting her orchestra or piloting the reader through space and time (either occupation her natural instrument), Mitchell's meditative poems reveal her poetic underpinnings. These poems are alive with metaphor, wry humor, and elemental confession as if to assure that when we read her work, sparks will fly up and take hold, kindling our own emotive fire.

SAMPLE POEM:

STANDARD DEVIATION

Resting after a fall never means

not getting up at all, but resting just until

worries begin their flight.

And for that relief, all that is needed

is a down pillow, and high windows to deliver

a share of moon's ambient light.

Or is this break a dumbness

and excuse,

another silly respite

just to put vexations right?

With no more to lose, it is time now to fracture

useless worry.

This resolve places me handily

on the brink of happiness,

just at the door of delight,

neatly positioned at the edge of comfort.

Book Details

Publisher: DOS Madres Press
Publish Date: Sep 11st, 2024
Pages: 96
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 9.00in - 6.00in - 0.26in - 0.31lb
EAN: 9781962847131
Categories: • Women• Women Authors

About the Author

Mitchell, Irene: - Irene Mitchell is the author of eight previous poetry collections, most recently "My Report from the Uwharries" (Dos Madres Press, 2022). Her Selected Poems, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2021. Dos Madres Press has published two other recent collections, "Clerestory" (2020), and "Fever" (2019). Mitchell taught Writing, English, and English to Speakers of Other Languages in inner city and rural New York. There she conducted poetry workshops and served as judge in poetry competitions. Formerly poetry editor of Hudson River Art Magazine, Mitchell is known for her collaborations with visual artists and composers. Her poems were set to music for piano and voice in an art-song cycle entitled Past All Doors, which debuted in Stuyvesant, New York. Several of her poems have been executed as broadsides and exhibited ad hoc at local galleries and libraries. Mitchell's early correspondence with poetry editors and scholars is included in the final year's collection of The Aylesford Mss., archived at Indiana University's Lilly Library. Mitchell was a recent Associate Artist in Residence with Cornelius Eady at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Praise for this book

Irene Mitchell, in the first poem of this evocative collection, invites us to join her in the making of her music as it diverges to a many-melodied composition. She trusts us from the start, asking for our interpretations and suggestions. Mitchell is the conductor. She plans to, and does, deliver a score that is "cosmic and natural." We follow Mitchell's inventive navigation through the bounties and throes of life. True to that end, the last poem converts the poet to a pilot who "keeps a steady eye on the view." This stunning collection is divided into five easy pieces, each one a realm of diverting meditations which, in turn, are "forwarded to something else, something unforgettable." Mitchell describes that something as "messages and marvels of the mind" which are "sacred to the process." She asks us (because we are her interpreters) to "taste and see" because these meditations, like vapors tossed are "not so deep so as not to deceive." Indeed, the poems in this collection do not deceive for they are all of equal value. There is richness in every poem. That is to say, the treasury is brimming. - Carolyn Rhodes, author of Library Girls of New York

This exquisitely-drawn poetry collection is a meditation within itself, investigating the balances sought among the natural world, creativity, philosophy, intellect and societal demands. Meditations, Mitchell suggests, "are vapors tossed /and upon their return /come messages /and provocations /sacred to the process." Within these pages are vapors ripe with wisdom and whimsy, ponderings and astute observations, and the ever-present grappling of how to achieve finite understanding in a world busy with intellectual interruptions and artificial, external expectations. Our worries create a "stiffness /where the cranium meets the neck." Balance is celebrated in these deftly-chosen words and images; a yearning to capture and unravel age-old mysteries focused on the meaning of being human; the ever-present realization that one must live and thrive " employing all the threads/ that seem appropriate to the occasion." The result is a superb poetic exploration, one in which we are encouraged to "Concentrate on the song /of the waterfall/ while keeping a curious eye on the open space." - Carolyn Breckinridge, author of Tuscaloosa Boneyard. Recipient of the Druid Literary Arts Award, and West Alabama Arts and Humanities Council, for her body of literary work.