Description

 

Well Seasoned

by Joanne Kennedy Frazer

Casey Robb’s diverse collection of poetry encompasses both free verse and traditional forms, (such as sonnets, pantoums, and villanelles) to move the reader through moods that range from eerie and somber to humorous and light. Robb mines topics such as tornadoes, grief, danger, aging, ghosts, and war exploring the darker side of life, and then with poems that frolic with monkeys & mirth, fiddles & fireflies, astrophysics & trains, paintings & partings, and a spider dance, she eases the reader to a cozy landing, a winding down to sleep.

 

Early Praise

“In Joanne Kennedy Frazer’s chapbook, Well Seasoned, you find

the extra-ordinary 

    graced beauty

that some would call

nothing out of the ordinary.

Frazer’s love for nature is apparent as is her pain at our abuse of planet Earth. Throughout the work the reader senses Frazer’s deep gratitude for the natural world, and for richness of family life and of life’s stages, including the later ones. The reader will enjoy Frazer’s use of a variety of poetic forms.”

—ELAINE BAUMAN, author of To Hold It All So Gently

 

“Frazer chooses Thomas Merton’s prescription for happiness as an epigraph for her new collection. His call for balance, order, rhythm and harmony is reflected in the beautifully crafted poems of Well Seasoned. Beginning with a series extolling the order and restorative power of our natural world, Frazer uses the rhythm of seasons to reflect the cycles of our lives. She transitions smoothly into poems of justice, of actions bestowing dignity to all, and laments the discord and disparity of opportunity we are handing to the next generation. But there is hope. With well-seasoned wisdom, she completes this collection with poems of nurturing family and healing found through nature.”

—DOROTHY BAIRD, author of Ribbon Without End

 

About the Author

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations. Since writing her first poem at age 73, she has been published in over 100 literary venues. Having now achieved 84 years on this planet, she enjoys leisure to delight in its gifts, as well as time to grieve its desecration. She relishes her daily activity of watching a variety of birds on her balcony as they eat, drink, rest, and cock their heads, look at her. She’s fairly certain they sense her gratitude which makes it a mutual admiration society. Her go-to poetry themes are nature, justice, family and aging. Five poems have been turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham. Her second chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. You can follow Frazer on Substack: @poetrybyjoanne.substack.com.  She lives in Raleigh, NC.