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Convergence by Roslye Ultan

$20.00

LIMITED NUMBER OF SIGNED AUTHOR COPIES IN STOCK

In CONVERGENCE, Roslye Ultan offers us a chance to experience the often-profound juxtaposition of love and loss, pain and recovery through the lens of nature’s radiant light. Shadows are cast in search of the regenerative forces of the will to keep on going. Ultan writes, Spread wide/ to unknown places/ plant your sacred seeds/ in generative emerald groves.The author chooses a musical rhythm and lyrical form to chronicle her journey, which starts in the quiet place of grief, losing a spouse, and continues to map a life of childhood experiences, travels, heritage, and traditions, awakening to love and mythological references; culminating in a cadence of spiritual reflections. Each poem in Convergence summons us to come, singing, with an observation and exploration of emotional, sensual, and reflective thinking. No doubt, it is in search of meaning prompted by an uncanny, and ordinary wish to transcend toward the sublime.

Cover art by Harriet Bart, used with permission.

Cover design by Denise Weaver Ross

Editors: Jules Nyquist and John Roche

What others are saying about Convergence:

Ultan is a dream catcher and a firekeeper, for these are poems of healing, celebration, and songs of the soul. We are summoned and grateful to continue to listen to her many words, offered in her many hues.

—Diane Jarvenpa, author of Shy Lands, The Way She Told Her Story, and lyricist/musician for Wild Gardens

Roslye Ultan’s poetry resonates with timeless wisdom, caring deeply about the world in which we live.  Vulnerable, sensual, and fleeting.  The solitary voice of a poet reminding us all of the power beneath the wings of a butterfly.   

 —Larry Long, troubadour and Smithsonian Folkways recording artist

This is a sumptuous, and often ecstatic, debut collection that gathers a rich array of poems. Roslye Ultan offers a sense of a life interwoven with art, history, mythologies, and the natural world. Her Jewish heritage has a deep influence on what she writes, as do music, travel, and the love and loss of a beloved. Whether lamenting or joyful, Ultan’s poems give readers rich allusions to other places, people, and times. I borrow words from her poem, Wilderness Pioneers, when I say her voice brims with “an endless surge of wonder.”

  —Margaret Hasse, author of Belongings: new and selected poems

Roslye Ultans's Convergence is one of those deceptive collections of poetry that upon first reading does not reveal its complexity. That comes later, in the second or third reading, when you sit quietly with the language. Take this as an example: "I told you / you made me laugh / and made me cry—and remember / how it feels to love." Simple, direct, work that moves through loss and longing, discovery and appreciation with a sureness that makes you appreciate the careful construction of both poems and sequence from the opening Summons to the final Convergence.     

  —Loren Niemi, storyteller and author of Circus Rex and What Haunts Us

Ultan is on the right side of literary and linguistic history, with a joyful erudition of art, mythology, and a full life.

—James P. Lenfestey, Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements

THIS ORDER IS A SIGNED COPY

LIMITED NUMBER OF SIGNED AUTHOR COPIES IN STOCK

In CONVERGENCE, Roslye Ultan offers us a chance to experience the often-profound juxtaposition of love and loss, pain and recovery through the lens of nature’s radiant light. Shadows are cast in search of the regenerative forces of the will to keep on going. Ultan writes, Spread wide/ to unknown places/ plant your sacred seeds/ in generative emerald groves.The author chooses a musical rhythm and lyrical form to chronicle her journey, which starts in the quiet place of grief, losing a spouse, and continues to map a life of childhood experiences, travels, heritage, and traditions, awakening to love and mythological references; culminating in a cadence of spiritual reflections. Each poem in Convergence summons us to come, singing, with an observation and exploration of emotional, sensual, and reflective thinking. No doubt, it is in search of meaning prompted by an uncanny, and ordinary wish to transcend toward the sublime.

Cover art by Harriet Bart, used with permission.

Cover design by Denise Weaver Ross

Editors: Jules Nyquist and John Roche

What others are saying about Convergence:

Ultan is a dream catcher and a firekeeper, for these are poems of healing, celebration, and songs of the soul. We are summoned and grateful to continue to listen to her many words, offered in her many hues.

—Diane Jarvenpa, author of Shy Lands, The Way She Told Her Story, and lyricist/musician for Wild Gardens

Roslye Ultan’s poetry resonates with timeless wisdom, caring deeply about the world in which we live.  Vulnerable, sensual, and fleeting.  The solitary voice of a poet reminding us all of the power beneath the wings of a butterfly.   

 —Larry Long, troubadour and Smithsonian Folkways recording artist

This is a sumptuous, and often ecstatic, debut collection that gathers a rich array of poems. Roslye Ultan offers a sense of a life interwoven with art, history, mythologies, and the natural world. Her Jewish heritage has a deep influence on what she writes, as do music, travel, and the love and loss of a beloved. Whether lamenting or joyful, Ultan’s poems give readers rich allusions to other places, people, and times. I borrow words from her poem, Wilderness Pioneers, when I say her voice brims with “an endless surge of wonder.”

  —Margaret Hasse, author of Belongings: new and selected poems

Roslye Ultans's Convergence is one of those deceptive collections of poetry that upon first reading does not reveal its complexity. That comes later, in the second or third reading, when you sit quietly with the language. Take this as an example: "I told you / you made me laugh / and made me cry—and remember / how it feels to love." Simple, direct, work that moves through loss and longing, discovery and appreciation with a sureness that makes you appreciate the careful construction of both poems and sequence from the opening Summons to the final Convergence.     

  —Loren Niemi, storyteller and author of Circus Rex and What Haunts Us

Ultan is on the right side of literary and linguistic history, with a joyful erudition of art, mythology, and a full life.

—James P. Lenfestey, Time Remaining: Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements

THIS ORDER IS A SIGNED COPY

We have a limited number of SIGNED COPIES.

Roslye Ultan is a Professor Emeritus from UNM/CCE Graduate Interdisciplinary Studies Program with a specialty in Art History/and Visual Culture. She was awarded two grants from the Institute on the Environment for exhibitions and workshops on the intersection of the arts and environmental sciences. Ultan has written articles and presented at conferences on the connections of the common trail of art and science; she further chooses to express ideas about the natural environment crisis and its beauty in poetic form, drawing on personal experience, which articulate imminent social and spiritual yearnings. Her poetry has been published in A Poets Speak Anthology: Hers, vol 2, Water vol 3, Walls, vol 4, Survival, vol 5; Echoes of Voices of Wisdom, the Waters of Creation, North Stone Review, Blues Moon Journal, among others. She will be reading from her book of poetry, Convergence, which features poems with musical rhythms and lyrical forms. In this collection, she chronicles her journey encompassing childhood, marriage and widowhood, travel, heritage, traditions, and spiritual reflections. She writes, Spread wide/ to unknown places/ plant your sacred seed in generative emerald groves.

Roslye Ultan holds degrees from Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, BA; American University, D.C. MA; and Post-Graduate Fellow of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She is the widow of composer Lloyd Ultan and lives in Minneapolis.

A Summons

 

 

Come in, oh, immortal muse

Amuse me, tempt my desire to create

on this empty page waiting weary without words

Athena, good goddess of poetry, music and all arts do not refuse

Spread wide your wisdom wings rapt high above the clouds

Unmask this aching heart choked inside a bundle of wounds

Summon me away from dark despair of Poseidon’s abuse

Bring news of two young sisters loose in swirling waters 

Abandoned home to claim their rightful place as mortal souls

Baptized by Amphitrite, daughter of Oceanus, to be reborn

Awakened by rose-red figured Dawn to feast the flow of savory grain

Stirred thoughts of home into their shielded hearts

Begging me to escape blank arid fields

Escape excuses to refuse the wand of Athena to compose

This tale mooring inside my head

                                                                 

                                                       As of now come this very moment

And listen to my words of many hues… 

๑๑๑

You Told Me — in four movements

                                               

AGITATO

 

I told you

you occupy center stage

no other

invades my concentration

I told you

we are a bundle of particles

held together by colliding dark sources

spinning around the distant sun

right now

your energy enlivens me

charging my being with lightness

right now

my mind quickens

blood courses in every vein

 

 

ADAGIO

 

I told you

you made me laugh

and made me cry—and remember

how it feels to love

and to want to be loved—still

you stand at a distance

you project a journey to an unknown kingdom

go ahead and love the trapeze artist

desire appears a bestial pollutant

right now

we kiss in air, and try again, yet again, but it draws no Hallelujah

I say, you crack and break my spirit

but, the fact is early on you said, I’m not to blame

because my heart is chained…you cannot unlock it

go swiftly back into the badger’s earth, to the well of Ruth

 

VIVACE

 

The dark horse bolts across the field

its phantom rider grips the reins

disturbed he hesitates along the rocky road

the rider who warned he was a stone

weakened as her soothing touch

drew life from what could come into being

 

 

ANDANTE

 

Did you know me, did I know you?

even though we said here I am, here I am, Hineni,*

on earth—tossed together in the fugue of life.                                      

 

 

*Hineni, Hebrew word meaning here I am; a call for love, devotion, and a willingness to sacrifice for others   

 

                                                         

๑๑๑

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