The Scene You See is Joannie Stangeland’s third full-length poetry collection, lyrical poems reflected and enhanced by an immersion in art; a truly lush, fulfilling read.

Poetic investigations of the art of Louise Nevelson and the fraught issue of being artist and mother simultaneously — Gard illuminates each at the same time, attracting us to both.

Day Grid

In lower Manhattan a black iron grate makes strict, predictable gridwork of a patch of the underground city – box of scattered receipts, wrappers and cigarettes swimming in water, spit, wet cube of air, trash and fluid flowing beneath the earth. Chaos framed by a measured, orderly system. 

“Lovely, clever and strange,” a full-color art book documenting assemblages made from items found in thrift stores, reminiscent of Cornell, but largely emerging from the framing box — given titles and poetic captions which speak to the “plaintive aura of lives outlived by objects.”  Declared “Beautiful, witty, tragic and basically holy-*-great” by Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle (where it is available.)  70 pps, 2014.  ISBN:  978-0-9905265-5-1.  First in a series of three books.

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