A Leaf Called Socrates

About the Book

The interplay of the written word and the painted image converge in Ann Holmes’ skillfully crafted poetry. Holmes gets inside the action of a poem, imagining what it is like to be the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, a goat in Greece, spring beginning, a cloud refusing to change its form. Love, loss, wonder, and the quirkiness of life leap off the page.

How rich a palette, poet-artist Ann Holmes’ brings to her second collection “A Leaf Called Socrates.” How powerful is her artist pen as she approaches biblical and ancient figures as intimates. “I glaze a Bosch bubble/around Adam and Eve/so they may stay in the garden.” With engines of irony and honesty, her poem “When I knew,” creates a loving reproach to intimate family encounters. Her poems, revealing human frailties, glow nonetheless, with color and affection. After her sojourn as an artist in Japan, she evokes a place where ‘Seven round holes/one above the other/”exist, “as if the moon/ dropped out/ of the sky.” In this new collection of poetry, her language, phrase and imagery paint emotional hues to reveal people in their flaws and creative gifts.

-Lou Barrett, author of Connecting Flights, Doors Gates and Portals, Clotheslines

About the Author

Ann Holmes was born in Chicago, spent six years in Japan and three years in Greece, and now lives in Westport, Connecitut. She received an MFA degree in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and a Doctorate in Art Education from New York University. Her poetry memoir, Shards on Japanese potters and pottery, was published in 2005. Holmes’ poems have appeared in The Asian Pacific American Journal, Japanophile and The Connecticut River Review and other journals.