Description

Painting the Heart Open

by Liz Nakazawa

These are poems of memory, thanks, prayer, bliss, dreams and blessings, embedded in color, and, while ethereal, are also rooted firmly to the earth. Hope is the sustaining thread even if some poems veer into darkness. Light is never too far away.

About the Author

Liz Nakazawa is the editor of Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon (Ooligan Press), a collection of nature poems by 33 Oregon poets. It was designated as one of the Best 100 Books about Oregon in the last 100 Years by the Oregon State Librarian. It was also a Best Picks of Powell’s.  She also edited The Knotted Bond: Oregon Poets Speak of Their Sisters (Uttered Chaos Press), a collection of poems by 32 Oregon poets. Her own poems have appeared in Turn, The Timberline Review and The Poeming Pigeon journals and haiku has appeared in ahundredgourds.

She also has a background in feature article writing for magazines and newspapers. Her articles have appeared in The Oregonian, Oregon Business Magazine, and The Christian Science Monitor. She’s also published in Psychology Today, American Health and Fitness Magazine and Northwest Travel. She has also taught freelance writing at Portland State University and at her home.

In her free time Liz enjoys bird watching, dancing (both folk and ballroom), calligraphy, reading, hiking and walking, identifying trees and flowers, writing snail mail letters to her son and friends, and collecting old books, vintage writing paper and stamps. She feels incredibly grateful for the love and nurturing, as well as friendships and community, from the pulsating Oregon poetry community. Words bloom easily here in Oregon.

 

What They’re Saying…

“In poems of praise, memory, reverence for nature and the multi-hued nature of spirit, Liz Nakazawa’s new collection captivates with ‘secrets of place, fugues and canons of personal history.’

“Here, one finds ‘sublime sauntering’ or a ‘legato of striding’ from a poet who urges the reader in tender imperatives to ‘enter,’ ‘abandon,’ ‘hold,’ ‘absorb.’ Nakazawa’s ‘legible musings’ range from the exquisite ‘complicated anatomy of figs’ to broad implications, geological and metaphorical, of the Missoula Flood.

“These poems, much like pages in a medieval book of hours, encourage the heart’s light to shine while one is alive ‘before that holiness of night.’”

~ Quinton Hallett, author of Mrs. Schrödinger’s Breast
and Refuge from Flux