We are excited to welcome back poet Beth Copeland. Synkroniciti featured two of Beth’s beautiful and serendipitous poems about mountains in our “Home” issue in 2021 (3:2). This time we feature “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Green Heart on a Gravel Road” and “Mermaid.” The first was a finalist in our “Wild” poetry contest. On a night walk with Phoenix the rescue dog, her “flashlight casting a blue pool in fresh snow,” Beth feels his wildness and desire for freedom and contemplates his impulse to run. How does domestication affect our animal family and what does it tell us about ourselves, especially when an animal has been mistreated? “Green Heart” shows us how nature renews itself–“Now the wilting basil has perked up”– and encourages us not to give up on our own renewal. “Mermaid” paints a fish in water with poetic gestures that are akin to watercolor: “each scale a flash of tin reflecting flesh.” Beth’s poetry marries the ordinary with the exceptional and the conversational with the eloquent in a way that is truly transcendent and present. Her sense of alliteration and use of the colors, sounds and textures of language are as adept and honed as her emotional intelligence and curiosity.
Order your copy of “Wild” to experience Beth’s illuminating poetry : https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Beth Copeland is the author of Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022); Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner; Transcendental Telemarketer (BlazeVOX, 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award winner. She owns and operates Tiny Cabin, Big Ideas™, a retreat for writers in the Blue Ridge Mountains.