Author of the recent and critically acclaimed memoir,
I Hear Voices,
Jean Feraca is also an award-winning poet. Her second collection of poems,
Crossing the Great Divide,
has not been widely available until now but forms a fascinating counterpoint to the story of emergence she reveals in her memoir. Brilliant, passionate, sexual, these poems travel into mythic ancestral landscapes in southern Italy and Sicily, on a psychic journey of self-discovery, sometimes luminous, sometimes harrowing, leading ultimately to deliverance, as in the title poem of the collection:
“I shall live out my life rejoicing
ribboning under the jagged shadow of the hawk.
There is no reason for this joy
eagle-bald, knifing through me like a canyon.
There is nothing in this landscape that defines me.”
(copyright Jean Feraca. All rights reserved.)