Leaf Called Socrates

The interplay of the written word and the painted image converge in Ann Holmes skillfully crafted poetry. Holmes gets inside the action of a poem, imagining what it is like to be the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, a goat in Greece, spring beginning, acloud refusing to change its form. Love, loss, wonder, and the quirkiness of life leap off the page.

How rich a palette, poet-artist Ann Holmes brings to her second collection A Leaf Called Socrates. How powerful is her artist pen as she approaches biblical and ancient figures as intimates. I glaze a Bosch bubble/around Adam and Eve/so they may stay in the garden. With engines of irony and honesty, her poem When I knew, creates a loving reproach to intimate family encounters. Her poems, revealing human frailties, glow nonetheless, with color and affection. After her sojourn as an artist in Japan, she evokes a place where Seven round holes/one above the other/exist, as if the moon/ dropped out/ of the sky. In this new collection ofpoetry, her language, phrase and imagery paint emotional hues to reveal people in their flaws and creative gifts.

-Lou Barrett, author of Connecting Flights, Doors Gates and Portals, Clotheslines