Commentary on my Poetry

Review of Victoria Twomey Poems

by author John R. Daubney

Suspend the machinations of your mind and open wide the portals of your heart and imagination when reading the creations of poet, Victoria Twomey. It is possible that each reading of her work will bring you gifts, pleasure and when you least expect it, compelling surprises. 

Her brilliant still-life images such as “a pink angel with a broken wing atop a music box,” and “a scratched and faded color polaroid,” that appears in The Passenger’s Remains, a recent work, reminded me in vivid detail and affection of souvenirs and keepsakes my parents had scattered about my childhood home, along with the melancholy accompanying the memories of unasked questions or unspoken sentiments to a departed loved one.  

In Inheritance, from her book, “Glimpse,” I was struck by the vulnerability inherent in the passion, tenderness and sensuality issuing forth from the biological reality of a body’s journey through time, accompanied by a human being’s never-ending longing for physical, spiritual, and emotional love.

Much like the writings of Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, Mary Oliver, Victoria will often take a reader by surprise with a clever or even amorous, but always meaningful, knockout punch near the end of one of her gems. From her poem, Unfolding, involving scenes contained in a few folded-up pictures that depict many events, decisions, questions, heartbreaks, and memories that can flow through a person’s lifetime, she ends with a searching and deeply meaningful question for any human being to ask of themselves.

This is what great art can gift any observer willing to fully absorb the creative expression and virtuosity of the artist. With the inventiveness, vision and imagination of a multi-talented artist, Victoria’s creations inform, entertain and touch deeply anyone willing to take in her work. Her poems may even astonish a person by taking them into their long-forgotten past where painful or even wonderful memories are retrieved, giving the reader the opportunity for an entirely new and life-giving interpretation. Her poems stayed with me long after the initial reading, inviting me to go back to many of them multiple times for a deeper understanding as well as for the pleasure they bring. 

~John R. Daubney 

Author of Those Who Walk with Fire:

Everyday People Discuss the Passion that Fuels Their Extraordinary Lives

Comments from Nancy Sobanik on poems published in the June 2023 issue of Verse-Virtual:

“A New Day for Mr. Death”

The poet addresses a personified death, depicted with wonderful macabre imagery, and triumphs over it. The poem ends on a hopeful and beautiful note. This was really enjoyable and original a treatment of the subject and the hope to escape its clutches. 

“Questions for the Dead”

The theme of dying is visited using questions from the inner-most heart, a favorite is. “in the arms of a precious lover beneath an antique moon?” The final couplet uses left behind possessions to evoke the sadness of the loss. A poem that I felt as I read it. 

Book Reviews:

In “Glimpse,” the title poem of her new collection, Victoria Twomey calls for us to pause, “share this momentary clarity” and assures us this will reveal “something calm and true.” As we read, we come to trust her to provide at least a glimpse of what might be better in us, and in our world. Though the poet knows the world can sometimes be hard or dark, she always retains faith in the beauty of it, and us. Twomey is an accomplished visual artist, who makes many beautiful things. Here, she makes new ones, but out of words. The poems in Glimpse will engage you and leave you hopeful, even if you had thought hope was in short supply. 

— Alan Walowitz, author, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems

As benefits a collection of poems by a poet who is also a painter, a collection aptly titled Glimpse, these poems are visual pieces filled with stars, with birds (and other things that fly including dragonflies and shamans), with fish, the sea, with memories and prayers, and the magical images of a woman in love. There is even a glimpse of “a woman, painting a woman… she paints the light illuminating a garden.” Step into that light and catch a glimpse of what poet/painter Victoria Twomey sees.

— Dan Wilcox, Poet & Peace Activist, runs the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, NY

At the parlor, the haunting and haunted speaker of these poems receives a velvet sack with “an unexpected weight of bone and ash.” In time she will learn to live with the memory of her father singing, her father distilled into dust. This is just one of many compelling glimpses Victoria Twomey gifts her readers in these poems composed with pigments and brush strokes of a painter, these paintings seen and reproduced on the canvas of the page.

— Indran Amirthanayagam, publisher Beltway Editions, author, Ten Thousand Steps Against The Tyrant 

Forthcoming in Verse-Virtual December 2023

The Promise

Waiting for His Kisses

The Rainy Road to Rutland

Tipton Poetry Journal November 2023

Waving Farewell

POETiCA Review Autumn 2023

Petition

Verse-Virtual September 2023 Issue

The Passenger's Remains

Glutton

Listening to Snow

TheRavensPerch July 4th 2023

Not of Our Ilk

Terrarium

Eyes First

True North

Verse-Virtual June 2023

A New Day for Mr. Death

If My Love Was a Lavender Balloon

Questions for the Dead 

The Amethyst Review, April 2nd, 2023

Spring Service

Verse-Virtual March, 2023 Issue

Wavelength

Portrait of a Woman in Five Poses

Sharp Objects

TheRavensPerch February 15th, 2023

Light, Dark, Light

Standing in the Presence of a Cornfield

Open Mic

Dissection

Home Planet News Online Issue 10

The Poet

Sticky Old Drawer

Blurry Fluttering

The Gardener's Wife

Some Terrific Pig. 

Walt's Corner, The Long Islander newspaper

French Door

Verse-Virtual January 2023

Red, White and Trembling Blue

Offramp, 1973

Let Her go

The Bards Annual 2022 (Print Only)

Rise Up and Sing

Broad River Review 2022 (Print Only)

Paradise

Sequoia Speaks Magazine Fall 2022

Evidence

The High Window Winter 2022

Color Blind

Glimpse

Verse-Virtual November 2022

Heart to Heart, Bone to Bone

The Amethyst Review (November 3rd, 2022)

Miracles and Sorrows

At The Ogre’s Table

Red Ogre Review Print Anthology 

Home Again

The Amethyst Review (September 27th, 2022)

Consent

Poetica Review, August 2022

Constant Window

Velvet Pouch

Waiting Embrace

The High Window, August 2022 Issue

Stones

Stadium Gods

The Crowstep Journal, Collection 2

Elizabeth of the Raspberry Orchids

Furrows: Deep Earth Collections published by Green Ink Poetry

The Seed

SurVision Magazine Issue 11

Floating

Sanctuary Magazine August 2022

Flutter and Glow 

Verse-Virtual August 2022

Still Here

First Literary Review-East July 2022

See the drawing and the poem:

Erratic Balloon

 BigCityLit Summer 2022

My Secret Recipe
 

The RavensPerch (June 28th, 2022)

Trembling Mirror

Confession
 

The Green Shoe Sanctuary

Cricket Song

Walk Awhile into the Heart of It 

The Celestal Review Cycle VI

Object

 
Verse-Virtual June 2022 Issue

Addition and Subtraction

 
The Stripes Magazine

Can You Hear It?
 

The Agape Review April/May 

Gone to the Angels

The Painter

Morula

The Ever-Widening Sea

Make Me Simple Once More

Verse-Virtual April Issue

Candy Hearts

Tipton Poetry Journal #51 - Winter 2022 Neither Kindness nor Cruelty

The RavensPerch (May 13th, 2022)

Children at Play

 As It Ought To Be Magazine 

The Healing Properties of Tony B.

Primeval Monster Zine 

Sasquatch

Red Ogre Review

Home Again
 

Writing in a Woman's Voice (April/May)

 White Dress on a Clothesline

I Will Take You In

The Trouvaille Review April 2022

Visitation

PoetryBay's Long Island Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

 One More Moment in the Light 

Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

Unfolding