Connie Jordan Green

Finishing Line Press

A book of poems about the everyday, and about how the ordinary leads often to epiphany.

One Moment Remembered

It is summer again

and my mother sits

on the front stoop

drying her hair.

She has loosened

the top buttons of her dress, thrown

a towel over her shoulders.

She leans into the light,

allows the breeze

to lift her hair.

For a while she has left

the worries of small children,

a world at war

where there is never enough

butter, gasoline, or meat.

Let sun dry the fine tendrils

around her face,

let wind smooth

the furrowed lines

that will come,

let this moment be sturdy as the steps

where she sits,

wooden planks planed

from trees that have endured

through rain and drought,

through hail and sun,

rings grown tighter with each storm.

Let whatever comes

come, her hair

loose in summer sun.

Slow Children Playing

Slow Children Playing, a poetry collection, grew out of childhood memories and the simple joys of everyday life. The poems were written over a three or four year period, primarily during writing workshops in which the instructor presented prompts to pull from our memories events long since buried and forgotten. Some poems sprang from quiet moments spent outdoors in the garden or gazing at mountains, solitary periods of washing dishes or kneading bread. Whenever or wherever the body can stop its frantic rush from appointment to obligation, from needful task to scheduled chore--those are the pools in which poetry surfaces and shimmers and insists upon having its voice heard. Such occasions allowed the writing of the poems featured in Slow Children Playing.

From the book jacket:

"Connie Green's poetry pays tribute to life's blessed struggles. Love and heartache are shaped by the lexicon of fencerow and family, kitchen and coal dust. Through her keen attention to living, Green weaves humor, injury, dance, and disaster into poems as fateful as mountain songs. ... A consummate fiction writer, Green's poetic narratives reach deep, the lines rich and lyrical. Slow Children Playing celebrates the sacrament of hard work and domestic ritual, as timeless and holy as being forced from Eden and her family's struggle to reclaim it." Bill Brown

"Tender and fierce, compressed and expansive--an 'arc of lyrical galaxies'--these poems restore our faith in poetry's power to heal. Each one offers a quiet revelation of personal and historical significance. Each carries with it a lifetime of wisdom and craft. Syllable by syllable, song by song, Connie Green's artistry maps a spiritual journey, textured, honest, open." Marilyn Kallet

A few reviews:

"Slow Children Playing is a fascinating look into celebrating the joyful gifts of life and meeting the hurtful hardships head-on. ... Green writes with energy, honesty, courage, and a heightened, yet thoroughly accessible, poetic punch." Ina Hughs, The Knoxville News-Sentinel

"I can smell coal dust and freshly sawn pine boards, hear bacon sizzling and the laughter of children. .. I'm reading author Connie Jordan Green's newest collection of poetry, Slow Children Playing. ... Do away with any presuppositions about the coal mining towns that once littered Appalachia. Green's poems are not bleak or dreary, but neither are they perky or cheery. Each poem strikes a balance between the ferocity of nature and the tenderness of the human spirit." Heather Mays, Metro Pulse

Selected Works

Poetry

Darwin's Breath

A collection of poems that move from consideration of fossils embedded in earth's oldest mountains, to memories of a childhood spent in a "secret city" during World War II, through the many gardens the poet has tended, touched always by the many people who have shared that life.

Household Inventory

Winner of the 2013 Brick Road Poetry Press contest.

Slow Children Playing

Tender and fierce, compressed and expansive--an arc of lyrical galaxies. Marilyn Kallet

Regret Comes to Tea

Now available at http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1599246929