Stealing Fire

by Claudia Mauro

Whiteaker Press is a Seattle-based group of women writers and designers who believe in the transformative power of the written word.We are dedicated to producing beautiful books that combine... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0965380009
• ISBN13: 9780965380003
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Whiteaker Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Poetry if you've never liked poetry

This work is real for me in elegance, simplicity and joy. Mauro puts together words like no other writer I have ever read...in fact I've never liked poety that much, but Claudia Mauro makes reading it so accessable and fun. The words partner and dance with each other. There is also a thought or perspective that gets some really good air time as well.This is poetry for the poets--the wordmasters to see another wordmaster at work, but mostly it is for the ordinary reader that enjoys reading but has never really appreciated the art of crafting a poem. There is an absolute richness of words playing together that Mauro hands to the reader with a smiple gesture of spirit.I recommend this with all my heart.

Mauro's poetry reaches beyond simple words...

What a poet can do to you in the time it takes to breathe is one of the gifts of writing and one of the mysteries of poetry. Take out any willingness to impress and what you have is Claudia Mauro's poetry. If Stealing Fire is a beautiful book (designed by Tracy Lamb) the poems are exquisitely designed too. Exquisite and sometimes maddeningly empty of words yet the compelling moments of what one finds in Mauro's images, the carefully selected words, the designs of these poems, fills the reader with possibilities. Mauro is not an angry, raging poet. I suppose having gone through the rigors of earning an FAA commercial pilot certificate Mauro is not one to lose her head. But Mauro's coolness and intelligence do not efface her capacity to self-destruct. Mauro knows what it is to stand there beyond the beauty of the world and consider the seductive promise of having all pain end.From The Day I Stopped Taking My Heart For Granted:"In the crushing emptiness of that moment there was nothing but one small sound. A faint but undeniable rhythm, a small pounding, barely heard across a vast distance. It was my heart, and if I was to go any further it would have to be silenced... The knocking grew louder, then something extraor- dinary happened. My heart, with a bullet packed and ready to explode it apart, gave itself to a perfect, solitary act of bravery--- and opened."Poetry might be the sanest way to apprehend what cannot be understood and poets do that with carefully selected, or spiritually garnered words. Mauro's poetry is spiritual in the sense of extending the soul/mind to embrace the world rather than dismiss or deny it. Mauro's poetry is not only very, very good but is grounded in the things that all of us can relate to and comprehend. Her images catch at the reader and remind one of the hundreds of times you too have comprehended what she is describing . Mauro's work is evidence of how the lesbian as "other" can be in this world in a most profound, painful, comforting, essential, and joyful way. Not every one of Mauro's poems are "the best!" (to use a phrase). In every collection, there are those you skim or skip. But when read aloud some of Mauro's pieces work better but well, they just don't move the soul. Stealing Fire is Mauro's first book, and she does have another, Reading the River which I think is a better crafted work. Get them both. Mauro is an emerging voice of a woman with poetry in her bones. From Stealing Fire: OctoberOctober is a beautiful word/like the crack of oak/ and frozen goldIf as Audre Lorde tells us, the economy of poetry opened up the possibilities of more women writing we are faced with the delightful problems of so many poets. And it is not enough to just read some poetry or find one's favorite to read only that poet. Mary Oliver tells us to read widely and to read aloud. The more poetry one reads, the more the astounding presence of life reveals itself. I find Mauro's work is g