In her first poetry publication, Bay Area poet and author Judy Bebelaar explores the depths of grief, loss, love, and ultimately acceptance.
Praise for Walking Across The Pacific:
“Old love and new love, the perishings of the past that inform the quiet but persistent appreciations of the present—in this small book Judy Bebelaar considers large subjects in a voice that modulates bittersweet elegy with subtle praise. As a title, “Walking Across the Pacific” suggests the presence of magic, the miraculous, as if in defiance of what might sink us. These poems assert that the wonder is all around us and within us, no sleight-of-hand-required.”
-Thomas Centolella, author of Terra Firma, Lights and
Mysteries, and Views from Along the Middle Way
“In compelling language and memorable images, the poems in Walking Across the Pacific tell the ancient stories of sorrow and guilt, love and loss, and love again. Judy Bebelaar is a meticulous observer who notices how ‘the squirrels beginning to nibble/at the green persimmons,/and finding them bitter,/throw them down.’ She deftly draws us into her world.”
— Lucille Lang Day, author of Married at Fourteen: A True Story,
The Curvature of Blue, and Infinities
from Sappho’s Fragments
…for all the letters gone unanswered
by lovers who have left
for all this shackled by love
and those lonely in their beds
the only balm:
the sadness in song
–Judy Bebelaar
from 91.7 FM, 4:04 pm
we have to try and say
the blue and the dark
in spite of
-Judy Bebelaar
“In Judy Bebelaar’s poems, you will find vision, wisdom and joy –
This is a book to savor and reread. Threaded through her words, you will discover
“metamorphosis, transcendence, transmigration.”
-Diane Frank, Poet and Novelist
Author of Blackberries in the Dream House