A stunning collection of highly unusual poems by Lyle Novinski, a renown painter. This collection of poems, written over decades, will appeal to anyone who loves the celebration of small things, sensuously felt by the imagination pouring its perception of places, scents, touch, sounds into the body; world beauty, felt deeply. For years, Lyle Novinkski took yearly trips to Italy and Greece, seeing those landscapes and people with ever more acute and subtle perception. He saw through the artist's eye - open, with wonder and the ability to completely surrender to whatever was present, allowing it all to flow into his soul, without prejudice, judement, or speculation. Then, the matrix of scenes from that year would remain in memory, fermenting and distilling into poems that were written - as love poems to his wife as he would go off on another trip the following year. Each poem gives a sense of a possible future, present as though it had just been happening. The writing elevates the world of time, the tapestry of past, present, and future, now endowed with love. Time intimate, overcoming the yearly space between him and his beloved. The way into this poetry is provided by, Glenn Arbery, astute literary and cultural critic. This introduction is not only instructive, it is in itself a masterful, creative piece, worthy of savoring slowly. Such a reading helps one enter the poems with care, with a sense of how to be with these words in such a way as to allow bodily perception of what Lyle was seeing. The secret lies in letting yourself become enveloped in stillness, the true subject, the bright theme whispering throughout this book. Such poetry educates the soul in how to move from intense but unruly emotion into the spirit-filled presence of feeling.
About the Author: Lyle F. Novinski is a well-known painter, liturgical artist, designer, and lecturer. While the forty year chair of the Art Department of the University of Dallas, Professor Emeritus Novinski and his colleagues developed an influential program in the Haggerty Art Village offering degrees through the Master of Fine Arts. An authority on the history of sacred art and architecture, Novinski is a Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture and designer of Dallas Area Rapid Transit stations. He has collaborated on over fifty new and renovated churches including the stained glass windows for St. Rita's Catholic Church in Dallas, liturgical furniture for the Church of the Incarnation at UD and First Methodist in Richardson, renovation of Perkins Chapel at SMU, and the creative environments of Neuhoff Catholic Center and Holy Family Chapel at Christus Retirement Center. A particular specialty is the temporary transformation of space into a sacred environment. Father of five and grandfather of 18, Novinski's home studio is a center of activity for his family, students, and friends. He has contributed essays to a number of volumes and his photographs and memories of the Korean War are being prepared for publication. In addition, he regularly leads educational tours to Greece and Italy. Novinski is a passionate verbal image-maker, a poet whose verse pours out at a rapid rate and is clearly "Reflected Knowing", that is, related to life, work, family.