Rosemary Herbert

It is a delight to the eye and intellect to spend time with photographer/poet Stephanie Blair Mitchell's new book of poetry, Viewfinder. Here, Mitchell, who has experience as a news photographer for the Boston Herald and has been Harvard University's Director of Photography for over 25 years, brings a poet's sensibility to iconic photos from history up to the present day. The book opens with a poem inspired by Joseph Nicephore Niepce's c 1826 heilograph, View from the Window at le Gras and Mitchell's words, "Escher sketch/ in binary light and shadow/ Sun writing/ lavender oil and petroleum/ on a pweter plate ...." Later, the poet observes in her poem "Art of the Portrait," "it's a delicate proposition/ asking a person/ to face their face...." All in all, this book is bound to provide stimulating perspectives for the discerning reader. The book is available from Finishing Line Press, Bookshop.org, Amazon, and elseshere.

I'm pleased and honored to have my poem "Archeologist's Note" published in the Maya's Micros section of Closed Eye Open, an online literary journal. It is the lead poem in my poetry chapbook, Sisters in Time, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in June 2026. The chapbook is inspired by my experience unearthing a pagan burial in a fourth-century, Roman-era cemetery, while I worked on an archeological dig in Winchester, England, during the sumnmer of 1973. Here is the poem, a haiku:

Archeologist's Note

Chockfull of chalk chunks

and flint, Winchester's soil

is bones' camouflage.

(c) Rosemary Herbert

Even on a cloudy day, colorful plants and trees dressed in autumn colors make the view from my beloved library as "TERRIFIC" as is announced in the wire sculpture Charlotte's web. It's a perfect day for dipping into E.B White's masterpiece, or for reading a thrilling mystery novel, or for plunging into volumes of poetry new and old. Currently, I am reading Diaspora of Things, a brand new volume of poems by Jill Pearlman, published by Finishing Line Press.

The exuberance of receiving an acceptance message promising publication of one's work never gets old. I am honored to report that my very playful sonnet, written in Shakespearean form and full of allusions to The Bard's Sonnet 116, will be published in Writes of Spring, an anthology forthcoming in Spring 2027 from Tupelo Press. Does that seem far in the future? Patience will be rewarded by the excellent editing and book production for which Tupelo Press is well known.