Guest post: "Behind the Cover" by Laura Foley
The cover of Night Ringing is a photo of forked lightning, over a mountain, illuminating a broad river. It speaks to the idea of the book and the title poem, the phone call one receives in the middle of the night, the "hard to assimilate" news: a mother has had a stroke, a younger sibling has died suddenly from an aneurysm, a parent has had a heart attack. The phone ringing, and we are startled awake.
The news is like lightning breaking through the night sky, carving a human shape across the darkness. It rips us open, rips us apart, and is the reality of our existence; we are always perched on the edge of death, our own or our loved ones. It is a terrible truth, and inescapable. And the image is also beautiful. There is that contrast, the terror and the beauty.
As it happens, I took this photograph myself, from the porch of my house overlooking the Connecticut River. I wrote most of the poems in Night Ringing while living at that house, the river a constant source of inspiration. For these reasons the photo seemed appropriate for a cover, and my publisher (Mary Meriam of Headmistress Press) was enthusiastic. After poetry, photography is for me a compelling source of creative expression.
Link to Follow Tour: http://worldwindtours.com/index.php/2016/08/04/tour-sign-up-night-ringing/
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28604835-night-ringing
Buy Links: Amazon / Norwich Bookstore / B&N
Author Info
Laura Foley is the author of five poetry collections. The Glass Tree won the Foreword Book of the Year Award, Silver, and was a Finalist for the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, Outstanding Book of Poetry. Joy Street won the Bi-Writer’s Award. Her poems have appeared in journals and magazines including Valparaiso Poetry Review, Inquiring Mind, Pulse Magazine, Poetry Nook, Lavender Review, The Mom Egg Review and in the British Aesthetica Magazine. She won Harpur Palate’s Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Award and the Grand Prize for the Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest.
Website: http://www.lauradaviesfoley.com/
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