Blue, Candled in January Sun, Poems by Sybil Pittman Estess
Sybil
Pitttman Estess' Blue, Candled in January Sun is a book for the
eye, ear, and heart. Her bracing music and gift for the luminous detail
always work to reach the deepest wellsprings of human experience.
Sample
Poems by Sybil Pittman Estess
Visit the author's website
"Sybil
Estess’ work is trenchant, witty, worldly in its stance and allusiveness,
and crackingly alive. I admire how her poems consistently negotiate
the gulf between privilege and suffering through an active and ever-ready
empathy, humor, and compassion.” —Cyrus Cassells
“I find much to admire in this collection, which is distinctive
both for its surety of craft and its stunning diversity of subjects.”
—Laurence Lieberman
“What [Estess’ poems] are really about is emotional connections—the
‘countless silken ties of love and thought’ Robert Frost attributed
his woman’s tent’s stability to in his sonnet ‘The Silken
Tent.’ They are strong, straightforward, painfully moving
poems in which [often]the places they describe serve as particular containers
for fluid and archetypal relationships.” —Janet McCann
“Sybil Pittman Estess writes on very serious subjects—good
versus evil, the flesh and the spirit—yet a singularly delightful
nature shines through everything she writes. She seeks epiphanies
among the quotidian, and finds them in unexpected places. Poems
such as ‘Ash Wednesday and the Houston Anglican Priest,’ ‘One
Thing It Was,’ ‘Festina Lente’ and ‘Search for
Perfect Blue’ are as fine as the best of her fellow Houstonian and
sister spiritual seeker Vassar Miller. Sybil Estess fuses fine craftsmanship
with a keen sense of reality. She is the real thing.”
—Robert Phillips
Sybil Pittman Estess was born and reared in Mississippi, took a B.A. at Baylor University, an M.A. at University of Kentucky, and Ph.D. from Syracuse University. She lives in Houston and has taught literature and writing at colleges and universities there and in surrounding towns. She has published poems in many magazines and journals, as well as reviews, critical essays, interviews, a collection of critical essays, and a creative writing text. She has written on Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, Maxine Kumin and other poets. Sybil is married to Ted L. Estess and is the mother of one son, Barrett.
ISBN 1933456035, 92 pages, $17.00