Fruit Box Castles: Poems From a Peach Rancher’s Daughter by Jennifer O’Neill Pickering

$14.99

 

Rilke’s Letter to a Young Poet, he asks, if you had nothing, no sounds of the world coming to you, “would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?”  Jennifer’s book stays true to Rilke’s “treasure-house” of childhood, exploring the richness of a youth growing up in California’s farmland… “an island of yard/surrounded by oceans of trees.” Jennifer Pickering’s poems bring us home.

–Robert Stanley, Poet Laureate Sacramento 2009-12

 

What a pleasure it was to read Jennifer’s work. Sometimes I simply sat back after reading a poem and said aloud, Wow! Her descriptions are shot through with originality and love. In one of her most powerful poems “The Alchemy of Grief,” she writes, “In theory we begin our journeys at birth. Travel backwards moving forward.” Take that journey with her in Fruit Box Castles.

–Wendy Patrice Williams, In Chaparral: Life on the Georgetown Divide, California (Cold River Press) Bayley House Bard and Some New Forgetting. Her prose is published across the U.S.

 

This collection illuminated with a sense of place: farms, orchards, family, “Mom midwifed rows of freestones…winter Mother sews hope into gingham curtains.” There is much to delight in the sensory: stubbled fields, perfume of pears. Hard labor is honored, planting, harvesting, “summer saved in jars.” And working in a cannery: “Hands that burn from sweet juice…where jobs were scarce as shade.” “Morning light poured across the wooden planks,” reminds one of Vermeer.
–Jeanine Stevens is the author of, Limberlos, a six-time Pushcart Nominee and the winner of the national poetry award from WOMR.

 

 

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Fruit Box Castles: Poems From a Peach Rancher’s Daughter

by Jennifer O’Neill Pickering

$14.99, paper

978-1-64662-311-2

2020

Jennifer O’Neill Pickering has deep roots in Northern California. As a child, she lived on a peach ranch in Tierra Buena, CA long after ancestors arrived in covered wagons from Missouri in the 1860’s. She is an award winning literary and visual artist. Her poems and prose have been published across the U.S and are part of “Art in Public Places” projects in Sacramento, C.A. “I am the Creek” was selected for the site-specific sculpture, Open Circle (Les Birleson), a place of healing built after the bombing of the adjacent B’nai Israel synagogue. “Affirmation” is combined with the visual art of her Goddess Series in a Sacramento Signal Box Project.  She believes literary and visual art empower the individual and applies these ideals to community-based projects including murals, fundraising for nonprofits, and teaching underserved adults and youth. In her many artistic and humanitarian endeavors, she enjoys providing opportunities for her fellow artists, poets, and writers.

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