Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin is full of shaman poems and Goddess mythology. This book has sharper edges than her first collection, but they open to a new level of vision. The poet depends on touch rather than vision to see the real world; often the eyes are used to look beyond reality.

Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin

Frank, Diane

Blue Light Press

Diane Frank presents in Swan Light a finely wrought choreography of poetry that intersects with the music of language and the spirit of dance. These poems of love returning to love, and light returning to light, are a heart gone supernova. Page by page Frank burns a path to her readers' hearts. The alignments are profound, the connections electric – from heart to bone, from marrow to star. These are radiant poems, where we earthbound creatures may find simultaneous escape and renewal. Diane Frank is an award-winning poet and author of six books of poems, including Swan Light, Entering the Word Temple and The Winter Life of Shooting Stars. Her friends describe her as a harem of seven women in one very small body. She lives in San Francisco, where she dances, plays cello, and creates her life as an art form. Diane teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University. She leads workshops for young writers as a Poet in the School and directs the Blue Light Press On-line Poetry Workshop. She is also a documentary scriptwriter with expertise in Eastern and sacred art. Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Yoga of the Impossible, her new novel, will be published soon. To schedule readings, book signings and workshops, and to invite her to speak to your book club, contact: E-mail: GeishaPoet@aol.com Website: www.dianefrank.net BOOKS BY DIANE FRANK Yoga of the Impossible Swan Light Blackberries in the Dream House Entering the Word Temple The Winter Life of Shooting Stars The All Night Yemenite Café Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin Isis: Poems by Diane Frank "These poems of love returning to love, and light returning to light, are a heart gone supernova. Page by page, Frank burns a path to her readers' hearts. The alignments are profound, the connections electric - from heart to bone, from marrow to star. These are radiant poems, where we earthbound creatures may find simultaneous escape and renewal." -George Wallace, Walt Whitman Birthplace Writer in Residence "There may be those who think of poetry as optional, but Diane Frank's Swan Light does not support that thinking, since it addresses a hunger you didn't know you had, first with trace nutrients of the soul, and as you progress, with the solid food of organic experience. Read, savour and be nourished." -Paul Stokstad, Author of Butterfly Tattoo "In Swan Light Diane Frank has written an irrepressible and epic love story: a love story for lover, artist, parent, child, earth, heaven, spirit, body, and music; a love story for what we are forced to leave behind, and for what we are lucky enough to keep; a love story whose thread is the music of love found in the many narratives and lyrics we live while walking, writing, running, dancing, painting, and praying. This is Diane Frank's most ambitious body of poetry to date, and I say "body" because the word "collection" is so inaccurate. This book is a whole, breathing the same breath as the author, and singing a meaning threaded with intricate images and motifs." -Rustin Larson, author of Crazy Star and The Wine-Dark House "Diane Frank presents in Swan Light a finely wrought choreography of poetry that intersects with the music of language and the spirit of dance. In these poems are whole constellations of imagery, a resplendent aurora of words showering down to light up the geography of the page. If poetry should not mean but be, as MacLeish proclaimed, then these poems by Diane Frank truly are." -Andrena Zawinski, author of Something About, PEN Oakland Award "Here is a book to treasure, to take down frequently for no particular reason, a book to help us remember why we took to poetry in the first place." -Daniel J. Langton, Creative Writing Program, San Francisco State University

Swan Light

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

1st World Publishing

Take an American geisha, a sculptor who knows everything the geishas know about love. Put her in a society that’s morally profane, and ask her to find her way. The story is told through the soul of a sculptor who lives her life as a contemporary Aphrodite. Katarina sees everything through the lens of an obscure Indian philosophy, Yoga of the Impossible. Early in the novel, two young teenagers face a trauma that will ripple through their lives unless they turn around and deal with it. You’ll meet a tribe of late-blooming artists searching for love on a crooked path. Dripping with fine art, YOGA OF THE IMPOSSIBLE is populated with musicians, dancers, sculptors, radio talk show hosts, and mermaids transforming lunacy into poetry.

Yoga of the Impossible

Literary

Take an American geisha, a sculptor who knows everything the geishas know about love. Put her in a society that's morally profane, and ask her to find her way. The story is told through the soul of a sculptor who lives her life as a contemporary Aphrodite. Katarina sees everything through the lens of an obscure Indian philosophy, Yoga of the Impossible. Early in the novel, two young teenagers face a trauma that will ripple through their lives unless they turn around and deal with it. You'll meet a tribe of late-blooming artists searching for love on a crooked path. Dripping with fine art, YOGA OF THE IMPOSSIBLE is populated with musicians, dancers, sculptors, radio talk show hosts, and mermaids transforming lunacy into poetry.

Contemporary

Diane Frank's third book of poems. The poems in The All Night Yemenite Café range from Iowa to San Francisco and late night Tel Aviv. Inspired by a journey to Israel two months after the Persian Gulf war, this book is an artistic journey of emotional risks and a powerful coming to terms. These are poems that push the edge with language alchemy, emotional intensity and visual beauty.

The All Night Yemenite Cafe

Dark River Press

"What would happen to us if we were to undertake the discipline of turning our life entirely and self-consciously into a poem? Through Yukiko, who becomes both a contemplative Buddhist and a geisha skilled in the refinements of sensuous pleasure, Diane Frank allows us to live within the soul of a young woman who has undertaken to create a life imagined and expressed as a poem, in every moment, waking and sleeping, making love or meditating. With its power of language, Blackberries in the Dream House will seduce many readers into considering whether a prosaic life is the only choice we have." Pierre DeLattre Author of Walking on Air and Tales of a Dalai Lama "Diane Frank's exquisite sensibility manifests throughout in Blackberries in the Dream House; it is both erotic and metaphysical. In fact, her great strength is that for her there's no division between the two. The result is this fine lyrical novel." Stephen Dunn Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet

Blackberries in the Dreamhouse

Sunstar Publishing (IA)

"In this new and startling collection, Diane Frank’s poems transcend not just genres but entire dimensions. When she speaks to J.S. Bach, she really means it and when Bach speaks back, she listens — entirely — the way certain moths perceive sound via their whole body, even their wings. How is this accomplished? It will seem to come through the poems themselves — their music, tonal qualities and subjects, yet it goes even deeper as it pushes up like duende through the soles of your feet. The voice is declarative, emphatic, spirit driven. She will tell you, 'When a buffalo enters your dream, / listen for arpeggio hooves, / the weight of music, / a copper moon / above a vanishing prairie' and you will, you must listen." 
—Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder, Radio Host, KPFK’s Poets Café

Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines: Poems by Diane Frank

Glass Lyre Press

"In this new and startling collection, Diane Frank's poems transcend not just genres but entire dimensions. When she speaks to J.S. Bach, she really means it and when Bach speaks back, she listens - entirely - the way certain moths perceive sound via their whole body, even their wings. How is this accomplished? It will seem to come through the poems themselves - their music, tonal qualities and subjects, yet it goes even deeper as it pushes up like duende through the soles of your feet. The voice is declarative, emphatic, spirit driven. She will tell you, 'When a buffalo enters your dream, / listen for arpeggio hooves, / the weight of music, / a copper moon / above a vanishing prairie' and you will, you must listen." Lois P. Jones, author of Night Ladder Radio Host, KPFK's Poets Café

While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems

Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place : A Journey through the Nepal Himalayas

Nirala Publications

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frank, Diane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Frank, Diane

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Frank, Diane. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rhododendron Shedding Its Skin

Swan Light

Yoga of the Impossible

Yoga of the Impossible

The All Night Yemenite Cafe

Blackberries in the Dreamhouse

Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines: Poems by Diane Frank

While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems

Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place : A Journey through the Nepal Himalayas