Colleen Payton

The Naked Prince Colleen Payton

"What you hold in your hand may look like a chapbook, but it is a magic object, a cabinet of curiosities disguised as a meditation on 'the terrible and wondrous laws of leave-taking.' Inside, a ballet unfolds. Thumbelina drifts through a landscape of unsuitable suitors, and as secrets reveal and re-clothe themselves in shifting lights and shadows, we begin to see at work a renaissance specimen logic wherein spiders' webs, bruises on cherry blossoms, storm-battered coral reefs, and the whiskered inhabitants of ceynotes transform themselves into both marvelous new world and momento mori. This 19 poem collection confronts us with the transitory nature of shelters and hiding places, the inevitable stains on the new bed, the uncertainty of days to come." Hester L. Furey, author of little Fish