Everyday Magic - Softcover

Russo, Stacy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 163534932X ISBN 13: 9781635349320

Publisher: Finishing Line Press, 2019

Synopsis

Everyday Magic is a poetry collection by California poet and librarian, Stacy Russo. The collection features poems celebrating the joy and beauty of common experiences. Fictional and autobiographical poems are included. Leticia Del Toro, author of Café Colima, states, “Everyday Magic revels in solitude and simple pleasures. Stacy Russo evokes the power inherent in cultivating a sanctuary for the creative self.” According to artist and author Toti O’Brien, “Everyday Magic is a choral pilgrimage peopled by a variety of fresh, poignant, indelible portraits of women.” Readers will discover celebration, joy, and liberation, as well as survival of trauma and abuse.

About this title

About the Author:

Stacy Russo, a librarian and professor at Santa Ana College in Santa Ana, California, is a writer, poet, and artist. Her book publications include Love Activism (Litwin Books); We Were Going to Change the World: Interviews with Women from the 1970s/1980s Southern California Punk Rock Scene (Santa Monica Press); Life as Activism: June Jordan's Writings from The Progressive (Litwin Books); and The Library as Place in California (McFarland). Everyday Magic is her first poetry collection.

Review:

Everyday Magic revels in solitude and simple pleasures. Stacy Russo evokes the power inherent in cultivating a sanctuary for the creative self. Here is a collection which invites you in to stay a while, to share in a palpable joy of deliberate independence, the table sometimes set for one, but also for many: a strong line of women who give life force to these verses.

Leticia Del Toro, author of Café Colima

 

As a pilgrim, journey through this stunning collection that captures everyday life, “her dreams are broad, thick- / deep enough,” family, and relationships. Through brilliant lyricism your heart discovers it has wings—then explodes, “her heroines: / bear women, / water goddesses, / a tall Cherokee / who wishes to marry / a hummingbird.” Each detail glows within this alchemistry, “smoking cigarettes / with the moon.” Join Stacy Russo in Everyday Magic and be empowered.

Cindy Rinne, artist and author of Moon of Many Petals and Breathe In Daisy, Breathe Out Stones

 

“The dreams of the terrified are simple”—handy, affordable, and contained like a crisp apple or a bowl purchased at a thrift store. What counts is to have a dream, pack it into a suitcase, and start off towards “the land of resurrection.” “I come from a family of dreamers,” Stacy Russo says as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery, leading from a place of pain to a place of freedom where she will be “no more afraid of the night.” Such a new home coincides with the ultimate surrender to solitude, a state that once embraced isn’t lonely at all. In fact, Everyday Magic is a choral pilgrimage peopled by a variety of fresh, poignant, indelible portraits of women. Russo intertwines the stories of those traveling companions with her own in a web of warm, joyful sisterhood, capturing through brief epiphanies their beauty, their courage, their capacity of choosing the less traveled path and following their bliss.

Toti O’Brien, artist and author

About this edition

• Publisher: Finishing Line Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 163534932X
• ISBN 13: 9781635349320
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 44