Published by The Puddin’head Press
Perfect Bound, 82 pages
5½ by 8½ inches 2012
ISBN# 978-0-9819756-2-7
$12.00
Praise for The Alleluia Tree
In The Alleluia Tree, Christine Swanberg examines every situation with eyes peeled for signs of resurrection and hope. She discusses life’s tragedies and hardships with unflinching, clear-eyed honesty, but bravely holds out for the glimmer of redemption and the promise of restored life. Whether writing about post-Katrina New Orleans or the winter-starved birds of the title poem, Swanberg puts every detail in place through fresh imagery and elegant language, the reader elevated above the gloom and grit by a spiritual vision further enhanced by a true appreciation of the sensory treasures that surround us.
Nancy Susanna Breen – Poet, editor, and blogger at Nudged2Write.com.
The Alleluia Tree sings with clarity and precision, the well-developed song cycle of a poet at the height of her craft, and cognizant of the full arc of life: small, sweet moments, like an encounter with a family of deer at the moment ” the sky is past indigo”; great, sweeping bridges over life passages; self-failings; and imperfect relationships that nonetheless nurture and suffice. These poems chirp with humor and go suddenly quiet with deep grief, amid so many other notes that can only be handled well by a sure, swift voice. Readers can be confident they will encounter themselves as well as unexpected blessings in these pages.
Glenda Bailey-Mershon – Founding editor of the Jane’s Stories anthologies
About The Author
Christine Swanberg is the author of nine books and has had over 300 poems published in various books and journals. Her work has appeared in over sixty literary journals. She appears in a wide range of poetry anthologies. She currently writes a column for the Rock River Times, a newspaper in her home town of Rockford, Illinois, that reaches 20,000 people each week. She has a long list of poetry awards and has been an editor for various presses and magazines. She has lead a full literary life. She has had several residencies in Port Townsend, WA. She is a regular workshop leader at The Clearing, in Door County, Wisconsin.
Christine holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Rockford College and Northern Illinois University. She had a thirty year teaching career. She has a gallery in her home, The Prints and the Poet, where she has workshops, readings, and displays the work of her photographer husband, Jeffrey Swanberg.
Contents
You’re The One
Heartland
From Coal To Music
Backroads
Bridges
Moonbeam And Starlock
Perseverance
Lament For The Silent Sister
Piano Lessons
Night Shift
The Contessa And I
Rearview Mirror
Ten Minutes On Michigan Avenue
The Alleluia Tree
Listen To The Snow
The Secret Of A Happy Alto
Again, On The Road To Tillamook
Sparrows Falling From The Sky
Mango Key Lime Chutney
At Three Arch Cape
Without Shoes
Fallow
Necessary Adjustments
Garden Pleasures
Before Communion At St. Nicolas Cathedral
Aunt Christine’s Orgasmic Salad
Port Townsend Inauguration Ball
Woodstock: Forty Years Later
2008
2009
2010
Questions On A Long Winter Morning
This Year For Lent
The Chagall Windows
Queen Of The Night
Volatility
RE:
Lucky Travelers
Sixty
At The Grocery
Under Neptune
Going Quebecois In Saint Agathe
Instead Of Destiny
Paradigm Shift In The Pacific Northwest
The Red Lacquer Room
This Thanksgiving, Remember
At Lake Crescent, Washington
Port Townsend Food Co-Op
Cheating Grief
Stone With Hole
The Big Easy
If Dreams Wrote The Story
The Shrink Or The Poet?
Changing Names
The Ladies In Black
Study In The Overuse Of Alliteration
Dear Masseuse
The Pleasures Of Wine
At The Sacred Cliffs Of Kauai
How To Be Happy In Old Age
Manifesto To The Health Police
Entering The Chant
Cottage By The Sea
A friend asks
Vincent
Reawakening
Writing In The Dark
Everything You Ever Wanted
Sample Poems
The Alleluia Tree
The epic blizzard tore and tumbled
through bare maples, grumbling locusts,
tilting pines and toppling prairie grass.
Nothing this severe since the early 70’s.
We woke to Siberian drifts pressing
sliding doors, a deck slightly swayback,
skylights packed with snow thick as cement,
the holes of feeders and bird houses
rimmed with ice. Winter regulars struggled
to get their seeds, their feathers
puffed and coated with snow. I sang
a song of lamentation for the birds,
watching them grow invisible and silent.
A sudden drop to twenty below.
I feared the birds had perished,
and prayed for cryogenic miracles.
For over a week not one woodpecker,
cardinal, chickadee, junco, sparrow,
nor jay joined forces against the wind.
One poor sparrow finally dared
and soon became the breakfast of a silver hawk,
perched upon the fence like a winged gargoyle.
I prayed for acceptance, but harbored the wish
to put a bullet through the head of Old Man Winter.
When a savage thaw turned the streets to creeks,
I heard a great commotion on the bare maple,
a cacophony of birdsong wild and insistent,
a great collective chant. There
on sagging branches were twenty-one birds,
every one of my regulars: a pair of woodpeckers,
a pair of cardinals, and all the rest,
like Noah’s Ark. I’m not one to believe in signs,
and I have no idea where my winter birds went
for one frozen week in February,
o return plump and full of fervor
to my little sanctuary and my love for them,
but that little maple will always be
my Alleluia Tree.
Listen To The Snow
The summer sedum slump, bedraggled by a bedlam of new snow,
snow so thick it bends the large lilacs and topples prairie grass.
At last the city is perfectly quiet, its recent crime wave on hold,
snow a better antidote to violence than all the men with guns.
A blizzard brings out the best in neighbors. This minute Anthony,
snow still falling gently on his blue parka, shovels the driveway
of our oldest resident, here on our quaint street where maples
hold snow on their bare limbs. Everything is closed. We settle in,
reconfiguring our day to meet the snow’s agenda. Today
snow is the Boss of Everything: school, traffic, appointments,
meetings, choirs, trysts, operations, helicopters, vacations obey
snow’s sweet command: Stop everything you are doing. Be still.
Adjust your entire day, so says the snow. Finish that book,
snow says. Be kind to neighbors and pets. Fill the bird feeder.
Clear your desk. Call your mother. Write this poem. Learn to wait,
snow says. Listen to the glorious complete quiet of this day.
Tomorrow, when the city has done its best to rid the pestilence of
snow, when we’ve had enough of snowmen and hot chocolate,
tomorrow, when things get back to normal, whatever that may be,
snow’s sweet quiet will linger for a moment, then melt into
the day’s business as usual. But in your bones you know
snow transforms like a powerful meditation, a great reminder
that there’s something to be said for that slow silence
snow bestows on anyone who cares to listen to the snow.
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