A Palette of Leaves

Review Edythe Haendel Schwartz s poems portray a multitude of subjects with deft brushstrokes. A Palette of Leaves quilts together family and friends, travel and study, artists and scientists, from prewar New York to South American rafting trips, always with an eye (and an ear) for the dissonance of human suffering. With precise colors, tight lines, and a fierce focus, Edythe s poems get inside her characters, so the reader gains many perspectives at once: painter, model, and poet become one. Bob Stanley, Sacramento CA Poet Laureate, 20092012 Bob Stanley, Sacramento CA Poet Laureate, 20092012Edythe Haendel Schwartz is a poet with a painterly eye. She has taken glad instruction from the many visual artists her poems evoke, and she understands perspective, detail, and the correspondence between color and emotion. In an era of the series and the serial, the poems in A Palette of Leaves are refreshingly discrete. Schwartz s palette is full, her subject nothing less than life. If her hues are often dark it is because she understands the place of pain in the dazzle of an ordinary day, the fact that the dead leaf and the green share the same spectrum. There is a resilience in these poems that gives me hope. Joshua McKinney author of Mad Cursive Joshua McKinney author of Mad Cursive Product Description Poetry. Edythe Haendel Schwartzs poems portray a multitude of subjects with deft brushstrokes. A PALETTE OF LEAVES quilts together family and friends, travel and study, artists and scientists, from prewar New York to South American rafting trips, always with an eye (and an ear) for the dissonance of human suffering. With precise colors, tight lines, and a fierce focus, Edythes poems get inside her characters, so the reader gains many perspectives at once: painter, model, and poet become one.Bob Stanley, Sacramento CA Poet Laureate, 20092012 About the Author Edythe Haendel Schwartz is the author of Exposure (Finishing Line Press, 2007), a nominee for the California Book Award. Her poem A Natural Phenomenon won first prize in the 2012 Friends of Acadia Poetry competition, and her poem Resist was a winner in Persimmon Trees 2011 Western States Poetry Competition. In 2006 and 2008, Edythe was awarded grants for residencies at The Vermont Studio Center. Her poems appear widely in journals and anthologies, including Calyx, Cave Wall, California Quarterly, PMS, Poetica, Natural Bridge, Earths Daughters, Poet Lore, Pearl, Sierra Nevada Review, Persimmon Tree, Potomac Review, JAMA, Hawaii Pacific Review, Vermont Literary Review, Cider Press Review, RUNES, SPILLWAY, Thema, and WaterStone, among others. Now retired from the faculty, Department of Child Development, California State University, Sacramento, Edythe is a visual artist as well as a poet. She lives with her husband, Sy, in Davis, CA, where she swims daily with the Davis Aquatic Masters and dances with Pamela Trokanskis Dance Workshops Second Wind group.