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"Language of the Birds" is featured on the cover of Maggie Paul's recent publication, "Borrowed World"

Borrowed World Poems by Maggie Paul

Praise for Borrowed World:

"There is a kind of lyric poem that concerns itself with luminous moments, where the poem is like a jewel you look through, and the world takes on a new light and is transformed. It is these luminous moments that one encounters again and again in the poems of Maggie Paul. She writes in a voice that does not flinch at sorrow or loss, but attempts to make poetry of them—poems that find a sanctuary, that try to hold on to love and family and compassion as if our lives depended on them, poems that can find solace almost anywhere: 'To see what I mean / take a small thing, / the bend in the brook, / that branch's shadow. / That's how I rescue / the broken day.' Coming from a religious childhood, Maggie Paul is a poet who searches for the sacred in a secular world, and finds 'the Kingdom of Heaven is where you plant it.' In Maggie Paul's poems there are no linguistic fireworks, no rhetorical hyperbole; this is a poet who quietly goes about her work the way 'sunlight seeps through the honey jar on the sill.' "
—Joseph Stroud, author of Of This World: New and Selected Poems

"'I was born into the season of death,' Maggie Paul says to open this compelling book, and then proceeds to combat that season with a lyrical voice that can assert 'we have flocks of birds within us / who flutter and fly out when summoned.' Indeed, herons, doves, crows, all kinds of images of flight suggest for her a way to transcend these issues with a haunting and gorgeous lyricism. This is an amazing book that makes us rethink the very nature of what poetry can do."
—Richard Jackson, author of Resonance

"Maggie Paul's poetry is an act of radical translation. In Borrowed World, she negotiates the treacherous region between the world as we imagine it, and the world as it really is—the world of potentiality, and the world of stark inevitability. Maggie Paul is 'haunted by the souls / of things beneath words,' and like a child opening one nesting doll after another, she is after an irreducible world; the one hidden behind the confusion of obfuscating pretenders."
—Gary Young, author of Pleasure

"Precise in their construction, tender in their attentions to the world, and mature in their knowledge of our 'borrowed' time, these songs and meditations radiate a refreshing spiritual consciousness."
—Mark Cox, author of Natural Causes

Maggie Paul was born in Boston, Massachusetts. After working for ten years on Madison Avenue in publishing and advertising, Maggie completed her B.A. in English at Rutgers University. She then received her M.A. in Literature from Tufts and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. The mother of a daughter and son, Maggie lives in Santa Cruz, where she teaches Writing and Social Justice at both the University of California and Cabrillo College.

Borrowed World by Maggie Paul
72 pages, paperback, $15, ISBN 978-0-9792567-6-9

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Click on image to order from us online   As Above, So Below, an exhibition of recent work by Scherer & Ouporov at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, offers an intimate look at their compelling art. Borrowing its title from an ancient dictum that describes in part a mirroring of macrocosms with in the microscopic, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue address the many dichotomies that take form, and are dispelled, within the artists' work. Since meeting at the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1989, Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov have worked together as a team in the production of their diverse art.

As Above, So Below: Recent Works by Scherer & Ouporov August 28–November 27, 2010 Bill L. Harbert Gallery and Gallery C Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov create complex works of art imbued with delicate beauty and near-animate energy. The couple's fully collaborative efforts produced under the joint appellation Scherer & Ouporov encompass drawings and prints, photography, video, sculptural installations, performance art and, foremost, egg tempera paintings. The latter are minutely detailed compositions, often embellished with gold leaf and gemstones, which draw upon a long tradition of figurative art from medieval icon painting to contemporary practices. Since meeting at the V. I. Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute in 1989, Scherer, an American raised in Florida, and Russian-born Ouporov have worked together as a team in the production of their diverse art. One of the most intriguing aspects of Scherer & Ouporov's work is their intensely intimate process of artistic collaboration. Each partner engages equally and interchangeably at every step in the creation of an object. They share tasks and exchange ideas on individual works as though they were truly one artist. In painting, one picks up a brush where the other had left off, with negligible variance in technique or style. Each work of art, no matter the medium, is the product of rigorous preparation, labor and reflection, engaging four hands and two minds in complete unity. Installed in the Harbert Gallery and Gallery C, As Above, So Below presents thirty-six works assembled from several private collections and from the artists' studio, and includes a large-scale video installation in addition to egg tempera paintings, silverpoint drawings, etchings and photographs. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated hard-cover catalogue, available in the Museum Shop. Please join us on September 24 at 6pm to hear Scherer and Ouporov discuss their work. This talk and following reception is free and open to everyone. Please RSVP to 334.844.3085. Suzanne Scherer and Pavel Ouporov, Talking Tree, 2006, egg tempera and gold leaf on wood panel, 13 x 17 inches, collection of Dr. Rick Daigle Scherer & Ouporov, The Dream of the White Peacock, 2007, egg tempera, gemstones, and sterling silver on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches, collection of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Gretzula

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To view the full article, click on the link below

http://www.northlightshop.com/product/print-issue-the-artists-magazine-november-2009/