THE LONG BLUE ROOM

The Long Blue Room

Benicia Literary Arts (January 31, 2014)

Joan Gelfand writes about what matters: environment, the economic crisis, meditation practice, family and love, but not necessarily in that order. Gelfand is a San Francisco Bay Area poet whose work inhabits that space between dreams and realizes the world of activism through art. Her latest collection, “The Long Blue Room,” includes the award-winning “Ferlinghetti School of Poetics,” “Paris Kisses,” “5AM,” and “I Know Why Sylvia Plath Put Her Head In The Oven.” With poetry drawn from the canvas of an imaginative, quirky and curious mind, Gelfand paints a picture of a global community that while in the throes of economic and environmental crises, still yearns for love and deep connections.

This yearning to explore transports Gelfand to the rocky terrains of the global financial crises, hunger in America and the not-always-comfortable inner worlds of being a human alive in the third millennium. Her fertile words envelop the reader in worlds of incomprehensible beauty finding serenity amidst the chaos.