Sage Woman review of The Singing of Swans
🔗 http://www.pearlsong.com/newsroom/marysaracino/SageWomanTSOS.pdfMary Saracino is the author of The Singing of Swans, a novel published by Pearlsong Press in October 2006. A native of Seneca Falls, NY who lived in Denver, CO for 12 years, she currently resides in Lafayette, CO. In addition to her work as a writer, Mary teaches creative writing classes and workshops on the Divine Feminine.
She is the author of three other books (Voices of the Soft-Bellied Warrior, Finding Grace, and No Matter What, all published by Spinsters Ink), and has studied the Divine Feminine as an independent scholar for 30 years.
Her essays and fiction have been published in the anthologies Writing by Italian Canadian and Italian American Women (published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Gina Valle, Ed.), She Is Everywhere (iUniverse, Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Ed.), Don't Tell Mama! The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing (Penguin Books, Regina Barreca, Ed.), The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Write About Food and Culture (The Feminist Press, Edvige Giunta & Louise DeSalvo, Eds.), Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul, (HCI, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Patty Hansen, Irene Dunlap & Rusty Fischer, Eds.), and Hey Paesan! Writings by Lesbians & Gay Men of Italian Descent (Three Guineas Press, Tommi Avicolla Mecca, Giovanna Capone, & Denise Leto, Eds.); the literary and cultural journals Italian Americana, Voices in Italian Americana, and Sinister Wisdom. Her poetry has been published in The New Verse News Online Journal, The Pedestal Magazine, Mothertongued.com, & Writers Who Cook (Herringbone Press).
Her honors and awards include: 2007 Lamdba Literary Awards finalist for The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006);2008 Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, nomination for her poem, "No Country for Old Women"; Third place award in the 2008, 1st Annual Italian/American Citizen Journalist Digital Witness Contest, for "No Parlo Italiano"; 2007 Fall/Winter Glass Woman Prize for "VIcky's Secret"; 2005 & 1999 Writer's Residency Awards, Norcroft: A Writing Retreat for Women; the 2000 Salvator & Margaret Bonomo Memorial Prize for Literature (co-winner) for "Valentino, Puglia, & Seneca Falls," a personal narrative published in the summer 2000 issue of Italian Americana; the 1999 Colorado Authors' League "Top Hand Award" (Adult Fiction Mainstream/Literary) for Finding Grace; 1999 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Finalist (Children/Young Adult category) for Finding Grace; 1994 Minnesota Book Award finalist (Fiction category), No Matter What; and participation in the 1991-1992 Loft Mentor Series program (fiction category).
She is a member of PEN America and the Colorado Authors League. She is a former member of the National Writers Union and the American Italian Historical Association.
<p>“<em>We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”(</em>Teilhard de Chardin<em>)</em></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;"><em>Involution-An Odyssey Reconciling Science to God </em> is as layered as a French cassoulet, as diverting, satisfying and as rich. Each reader will spoon this book differently. On the surface it seems to be a simple and light-hearted poetic journey through the history of Western thought, dominantly scientific, but enriched with painting and music. Beneath that surface is the sauce of a new evolutionary idea, involution; the informing of all matter by consciousness, encoded and communicating throughout the natural world. A book about the cathedral of consciousness could have used any language to paint it, but science is perhaps most in need of new vision, and its chronology is already familiar.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The author offers a bold alternative vision of both science and creation: she suggests that science has been incrementally the recovery of memory, the memory of evolution/involution</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">.</em></p><p>“<em> Involution proposes that humans carry within them the history of the universe, which is (re)discovered by the individual genius when the time is ripe. All is stored within our DNA and awaits revelation. Such piecemeal revelations set our finite lives in an eternal chain of co-creation and these new leaps of discovery are compared to mystical experience</em>” (From a reviewer)</p><p>Each unique contributor served the collective and universal return to holism and unity. Thus the geniuses of the scientific journey, like the spiritual visionaries alongside, have threaded the rosary of science with the beads of inspiration, and through them returned Man to his spiritual nature and origin.</p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">The separation between experience and the rational intellect of science has, by modelling memory as theory, separated its understanding from the consciousness of all, and perceives mind and matter as separate, God and Man as distinct. This work is a dance towards their re-unification: Saints and scientists break the same bread.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">All of time and all the disciplines of science are needed for the evidence. Through swift (and sometimes sparring) Cantos of dialogue between Reason and Soul, Philippa Rees takes the reader on a monumental journey through the history of everything – with the evolution of man as one side of the coin and involution the other. The poetic narrative is augmented by learned and extensive footnotes offering background knowledge which in themselves are fascinating. In effect there are two books, offering a right and left brain approach. The twin spirals of a DNA shaped book intertwine external and internal and find, between them, one journey, Man’s recovery of Himself., and (hopefully) the Creation’s recovery of a nobler Man.</span></p><p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">From the same review “</span><em style="line-height:1.6em;">The reader who finishes the book will not be the same as the one who began it. New ideas will expand the mind but more profoundly, the deep, moving power of the verse will affect the heart.</em></p><p><em>(Marianne Rankin: Director of Communications, Alister Hardy Trust)</em></p><p> </p>
Sage Woman review of The Singing of Swans
🔗 http://www.pearlsong.com/newsroom/marysaracino/SageWomanTSOS.pdf↗
MatriFocus Cross-Quarterly review of The Singing of Swans
🔗 http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM06/review-fiction.htm↗
Curled Up With A Good Book review of The Singing of Swans
🔗 http://www.curledup.com/singswan.htm↗
<em><strong>The Lambda Literary Foundation named The Singing of Swans as a finalist in the Spirituality category in its 19th Annual (2007) Lambda Literary Awards.</strong></em><br /><br />"<em><strong>The Singing of Swans</strong></em> is a remarkable narrative calling -- even compelling -- us to connect with our own ancestral roots, to seek our own inner wisdom, and to reclaim our own inner voices!"<br /><br /><strong>Margaret Starbird<br /></strong>author of <strong><em>The Woman with the Alabaster Jar<br /></em></strong>and <strong><em>Mary Magdalene: Bride in Exile</em></strong><br /><br />"The Roman poet Ovid sang of the beautiful Sicilian lake where Persephone descended to the otherworld -- a lake now dying from overdevelopment. No siren's song could be more commanding than this novel centered on that magical tale. Generations of women of the <em>streghe</em> tradition -- call them pagans, call them witches -- join their voices in this tightly wrought magical chorus,"<br /><br /><strong>Patricia Monaghan</strong><br />author of <strong><em>The Goddess Path<br />& </em></strong><em><strong>The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog</strong></em><br /><br />"<em><strong>The Singing of Swans</strong></em> is more than a novel. It combines an immense amount of learning, a great novelist's ability to weave the present, the past, the far past, and the future into a spell-binding story...and to transmute all this into an offer of life to all of us trapped in contemporary deadening cultures....This novel may give you the courage to quit your dead-end job, book a flight to Italy, and, like Madalene, 'exhilarated by the possibilities,' howl 'at the brilliant blue Sicilian sky,'"<br /><br /><strong>Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum<br /></strong>author of <em><strong>Dark mother: african origins and godmothers</strong></em>