At the Edge of the Cliff by Marian Kaplun Shapiro Presents Transformative Poetry

by Admin | Jan 25, 2021 | New Release, News

Plain View Press announces the publication of At the Edge of the Cliff by Marian Kaplun Shapiro, a book of experimental poems, at bookstores and Amazon on January 25, 2021. At her poetic peak, Shapiro experiments with visual form and edgy content to disrupt fundamental givens and generate transformative experiences. Beyond mere words, the word drawings in At the Edge of the Cliff touch extremes of feeling that jar the subconscious and make each poem an experiment, a beautiful and challenging climb to the edge.

With college studies in English, music, writing, teaching, and psychology, Shapiro works as a practicing psychologist in Lexington, Massachusetts, where she also creates art as a poet and lives as a free spirit with her view of woods, flowers, birds, and an unpolluted sky. Now 80 something, she adores her family and sees life as one long experiment that has turned out amazingly well.

“A book of poetry and drawings that explore emotional disconnections, silences, and efforts to make contact. …her purpose is to pursue ‘extremes of feeling’ and their resulting epiphanies through ‘experimenting with form and content.’ These experiments encompass diagrams, sketches, spacing, and unusual typography, which often focus attention on conceptual organization. …Poems that creatively reveal the unsaid and unsayable.” —Kirkus Reviews

“‘If the clocks are running slow, will we have more time than we thought?’ Shapiro muses. It’s a riddle; an invitation without return address, a dreamscape brimming with the raw and paradoxical nature of the unconscious. Pivoting between visual poetry, free verse, and prose poetry, Shapiro, a therapist as well as poet, captures the wonder and challenge of our flawed humanity with a generous helping of grace.” —Nina Corwin, LCSW; author of The Uncertainty of Maps

“Marian Shapiro asks us to ask ourselves, ‘Why here? Where are we going? What time is it? What is foreground? Background?’ Shapiro guides us through an amalgam of poems, lyrical, brutal and redemptive. In the midst of her pinwheel of life, six wondering clocks, and assorted graphic and sprawling cursive mind play poems, she teaches us ‘inch by inch’ that we need horizon, ‘To weigh/ the whatness of lake/ the whoness of mountain/ the whenness of/ sky.'” —Barbara Laiolo-March, Poet, cofounder of the Surprise Valley Writers’ Conference

“Joy. Terror. Sorrow. The author’s familiarity with those unspoken, secret parts of ourselves brings us to that something in us that is even beyond the unconscious. This collection of poetry challenges the givens of poetic form, opening us to asking ourselves: Is there something like a spirit or soul in there? Could that be?” —Sanford Rosenzweig, Clinical Psychologist

“In her collection of poetry, The Edge of the Cliff, Marian Shapiro hammers home some vital philosophy intertwining minute details and instructive ‘eurekas’ to transport readers to a lost time when existence was under less threat. Shapiro also allows glimpses into grim realities in poems like ‘Rape,’ that, instead of hammering readers with overkill, remind us of the horrors in calm terms. Her ability to mix the vastly philosophical with the intensely personal is evidence of her mastery of form.” —Doug Stuber, Editor, Poems from the Heron Clan

Publisher Plain View Press is a 45-year-old issue-based literary publishing house, a far-flung community of humane and highly creative writers, artists and activists, whose energies bring humanitarian enlightenment and hope to individuals and communities grappling with the issues of our time—peace, justice, the environment, education and gender. Copies of At the Edge of the Cliff , paperback (ISBN: 978-1-63210-083-2), can be purchased through Amazon, retail bookstores, or ordered in quantity from Plain View Press.