A Poetry Break: Poetry for Your Pleasure

Southern Scribe
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Poetry Review

A Poetry Break: Poetry for Your Pleasure
by Kay Day
Ocean Publishing, 2004
Trade paper, $11.95 (72 pages)
ISBN: 0-9717641-0-7

Unlike chapbooks or volumes of poetry where the poetry begins and ends with the poem, Kay Day's Poetry Break is a celebration of the literary form. In her foreword, she falls in role of teacher, sharing information on style, format and views on poetry. Day's author notes provides the inspiration and story behind each poem.

The first section of Poetry Break celebrates the sonnet. Each group of 14 lines creates images of growing up in the South and the poetry of nature here. There is also the hint of passion, with which sonnets are so well associated. From "When Thunder Whispers":

Your own approach was gentle, calm. No thief

could steal my future with such courtesy,

the sort that can purloin yet not offend.

But fury can be cloaked in quiet motif.

You are my tempest of serenity,

my longest storm. I hope you never end.

Several of the poems pay homage to the places she has lived -- her birth state of South Carolina and her adopted home in Florida. Day remembers Hurricane Hugo at a time when she was nine-months pregnant. She pays tribute to the great fire of 1901 that swept through Jacksonville, Florida.

Award-winning poet Kay Day writes columns for Circle Magazine, Alsop Review, and Jacksonville.com (the web site for the Florida Times-Union). Her poetry has appeared in Pif, Conspire, Perihelion, Byline, and The Writer. Kay Day presents poetry programs in schools, civic organizations, and book festivals.

Joyce Dixon
Southern Scribe Reviews