Treasures Stored for Winter

By Joan Burstyn

Joan Burstyns fourth book of poems, Treasures Stored for Winter, draws the reader into the authors life from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. At times, personal and political events combineas happens on the evening of June 30, 1982, when the last state legislature rejected the Equal Rights Amendment. At that moment, Burstyn stood with other women around a pond in South Orange, New Jersey, as they raised their voices in protest as remembered in Waiting to Rise Again.

I felt braided into others lives, mingled beyond extrication. We stood together in darkness, each with candle flooding the pond with light, hope filling our eyes even as the Equal Rights Amendment was snuffed out, swiftly as a candles flame

In this collection, Burstyn makes clear that life demands both awe and optimism from us.

My first dip into Treasures Stored for Winter brings up a small package, After Snow; it bursts open with imagery so vibrant and glowing that I cant help myself. I dip again, bring out While the House Sleeps; with its commanding imagery metaphorically I become a matador/swirling my red cloak/before the bull, prodding it with my words. Joanna Chrzanowski, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor; chair, English Department, Jefferson College

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491721551

Joan Burstyn

Joan Burstyn, an award-winning poet, is the author of three earlier collections of verse—Song Cycle (1976), Waiting for the Lame Horse (1987), and Path into the Sun (2009). She was the winner of the 2007 Milton Dorfman international poetry prize. An historian of education, she has written and edited several other books.

Book preview

01-Lamp%20copy.jpg

Lamp   Burstyn, 1986

TREASURES STORED

FOR WINTER

Joan Burstyn

iUniverse LLC

Bloomington

TREASURES STORED FOR WINTER

Copyright © 2014 Joan Burstyn.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2156-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2155-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014901326

iUniverse rev. date: 02/10/2014

For

my grandchildren

David, Amalia, Reuven, Gabi, and Sasha

Acknowledgments

Like a squirrel hurriedly burying nuts ahead of frost, I store poems in folders and notebooks, on used envelopes and the backs of shopping lists, and, nowadays, on CDs and thumb drives. I would not have looked through this store of treasures had it not been for the Empty Attic Society, founded last summer with my friends from the Women’s Project of New Jersey, as we faced the need to downsize our lives.

I have no attic filled with family heirlooms and children’s memorabilia to pass on to family and friends, but I do have a virtual attic in my carefully saved poems. Here, in Treasures Stored for Winter, I share with you special moments in my life that I have recorded in those