Hearing Beyond Sound: New and Collected Poems

While Starkman is also a prose writer, this is her fifth book of poems. Her poetry has grown wiser and encompasses a wider view of the world than her earlier eclectic work. This collection includes themes on relationships among men and women, family and friends, travel; and the influence of Zen philosophy. Poems on finding peace of mind with aging appear: I'm at peace/ I didn't think/ this calmness/ could happen/ this west immeasurable stillness/ in my life; an ability to look at a situation from more than one view: I gather in/ this lake and this mountain range/ becoming for a moment/ not God, but my own self; appreciation of small events, yet encompassing a wider view of the of the world, and finding pleasure in aging as her grandson gathers apricots from a tree: I hadn't seen fruit-bearing trees/ until my twenties and by thirty,/ had no time to savor them./ Only now do I know/ what I've mistaken for wisdom. She has divided the book into five sections, placing her poems in such categories as History Lessons, which include Starkman's years of living in Israel with her then small children and what she learned, to From the Past, the remembrances of her parents and an imaginary letter to the poet, Anne Sexton, who left a lasting impression on her earlier stages of writing.. NOTA: El libro no está en español, sino en inglés.