Yvonne Zipter - "The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets" - Linda Bubon
Yvonne Zipter will discuss The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets. Zipter will be joined in conversation by Linda Bubon. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
This event will be held in person at The Seminary Co-op.
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About the book: A kind of radical compassion is at work in the poems of Yvonne Zipter’s The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets. It’s not simple good cheer or just some sort of positive spin on life; it’s complex, and it’s always a little—deliciously—ambiguous. One can be, in these poems, “blessed with a trinity / of crows”; one notices a lovely Johnny Hodges saxophone tune returning unbidden in the midst of a round of chemotherapy; and one realizes, then, that one is in the presence of a poet wielding words the way a player plays notes of a sad and somehow uplifting song. –Robert Wrigley
About the author: Yvonne Zipter is author of the poetry collectionsThe Wordless Lullaby of Crickets, Kissing the Long Face of the Greyhound, The Patience of Metal (Lambda Literary Award Finalist), and Like Some Bookie God, the Russian historical novel Infraction, and the nonfiction books Diamonds Are a Dyke’s Best Friend and Ransacking the Closet. Her individual published poems are being sold in two repurposed toy-vending machines in Chicago, the proceeds of which support a local nonprofit organization.
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his brilliant collection of poems by Yvonne Zipter is filled with compressed storytelling that speaks both lyrically and narratively to the human spirit’s resiliency. Keenly observant, Zipter writes compassionately and gratefully as she takes readers with her through hardship, loss, and her battle with cancer toward portals of hope. With abundant intelligence and heart, Zipter looks deeply into the darkness while sustaining the possibilities of light. She shows, through flawless writing and rich imagery, that despite whatever life’s challenges may be, there are ways in which fulfillment may be attained. To borrow a line from her concluding poem, this book hums “through the dark hours on a swell of happiness.”
—Adele Kenny, Poetry Editor, Tiferet
A kind of radical compassion is at work in the poems of Yvonne Zipter’s The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets. It’s not simple good cheer or just some sort of positive spin on life; it’s complex, and it’s always a little—deliciously—ambiguous. One can be, in these poems, “blessed with a trinity / of crows;” one notices a lovely Johnny Hodges saxophone tune returning unbidden in the midst of a round of chemotherapy; and one realizes, then, that one is in the presence of a poet wielding words the way a player plays notes of a sad and somehow uplifting song.
—Robert Wrigley, author of The True Account of Myself as a Bird
In her third full-length poetry collection, The Wordless Lullaby of Crickets, Yvonne Zipter writes with power and precision about her family, the poets who influenced her, her sexuality, her struggle with cancer, her wife, her favorite jazz music to which she turns again and again, and above all, the consolation of nature, which is, as it was for Emily Dickinson, the encounter with the numinous, perfectly exemplified in the last lines of “The Kestrel:” “all the holy days of our childhoods insignificant / in the single yellow rosary bead of her eye.”
—J.R. Solonche, author most recently of Selected Poems 2002-2021