Keep your Distance – Word Sonnets for Corona Times

June 2021 Literature

by Ricky Rapoport Friesem
Kipod Press

Cover design: Natalie Friesem and Byron Clarke

Available on Amazon Kindle

The format of the word sonnet fits perfectly with the social distancing suggested in all these poems written during the past year of Covid 19.

A word sonnet is a 14-word poem with one word per line. Each page therefore is a vast white space surrounding the column of words.

This is the sixth poetry collection of award-winning Ricky Rapoport Friesem who lives in Rehovot. Among her many prizes was first place in the 2020 Voices Israel Reuben Rose Memorial Competition. She has been published in international anthologies and in 2010 she was International Senior Poet Laureate for the Amy Kitchener Foundation of America.

Ricky was born in Calgary, Canada, and grew up in Toronto. In 1972 she made Aliyah with her husband, now Prof. Emeritus of Physics of the Weizmann Institute, and their three sons. Ricky worked for 25 years as head of the Public Relations Department at Weizmann.

But poetry was always her passion and her work has been received with enthusiasm in Israel and overseas. The poems in this collection reflect the emotions of many people worldwide: the fears and traumas of the coronavirus, the isolation and restricted activity and the actual adjustments that we have made in using technology, and having time to see the world around us.

In "Ambivalent," most of us who are "zoomed out" can appreciate her words.

AMBIVALENT

this

crisis,

the

internet

has

become

best

friend

and

worst

enemy

We have also needed reassurance that while our internal world has turned upside down, the sun still rises in the morning and sets at night.

SUNDIAL

delight

the

sun`s

progress

around

our

house.

The

world

still

turning

For those who live in leafy suburbs or rural regions rather than the high-density dwellings of the inner cities, many felt calmed by watching nature as Ricky describes in

WINDOW-GAZING

woodpecker

lives

pecan

tree.

Never

before

noticed

him,

the

tree

Her poem Art Lessons takes us to the apprehension that many feel about how we will adjust to a normal life again.

ART LESSONS

When

Hopper`s

deserted

streets

morph

into

Toulouse Lautrec`s

bustling

bars,

utter

Munch

Scream

In this collection Ricky Friesem has taken us through the emotions of a year that we never anticipated with the thought that when normalcy returns, we will perhaps be more aware of the world around us and appreciative of social closeness and the value of a precious hug.

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About the author

Wendy Blumfield

Wendy Blumfield was born in London. There she started a career in publishing and feature writing but when she moved out of the city she completed London University extramural studies in Social Psychology and trained with the National Childbirth Trust to teach and counsel pregnant women and new parents.

In 1974 she came to live in Israel from Fleet, Hampshire to Haifa with her husband and four small children.

In Israel she co-founded the Israel Childbirth Education Center, trained new counselors and started working both in her private studio, Rambam Hospital and in community centers. She co-ordinated the childbirth preparation courses for the Students Union at the Technion.

Parallel to this, she continued writing freelance for Israeli and overseas journals. Her book, "Life After Birth – Everywoman’s Experiences of the First Year of Motherhood," was published in the UK, translated into Spanish and Russian, and her anthology, "The Soldiers` Mother", was published in Israel by Bibliobooks. She has been writing poetry all her life in extreme situations of joy and stress and is on the Board of Voices Israel Group of Poets in English.

Her late husband David was a retired computer systems analyst and she has eleven grandchildren.