By Marivir R. Montebon
New York – The pale August moon was above her quiet Upper West Side neighborhood when artist June Pascal launched her poetry book “Husbands and Lovers” with good old friends on August 4, 2018. This collection of romantic and erotic love poems (and others) is June’s life-long expression as a wife, mother, lover, friend, woman, and artist. June is a well-traveled painter, fashion designer, and healthy food guru.
The book launch was a much-anticipated birthing, for it took June three years to finally produce it in 165 pages. All who came for felicitations at her art studio, including this writer, felt like giving birth with her as well. Finally, I said to myself, June has fully pushed out the book.
An evening of relaxation and reflection through poems.
Martha Ma, an artist and educator, describes Husbands and Lovers as “candid and refreshingly relatable.” As a poet, Ma describes June’s writing as having a “delicious precision and humor.”
All the guests read some poems from the book, after which there was dancing till the wee hours of the night. There’s an untitled poem that I love:
Untitled
I write to confirm that once again,
I am hopeful, that I act on behalf
of my life longing for itself.
I write to clear the mind, to be at peace,
while extracting the golden kernels
of the truths about love
out of the chaos of despair.
Wonderfully enough, while the women were gleefully dancing, they remember this poem, and recited some its lines while prancing:
The View from Cloud Nine
I like it here on Cloud Nine,
The view is fine indeed.
All I see is bright and beautiful,
I look beautiful even to myself.
My back is straight. I lost some weight.
I laugh out loud,
I laugh a lot with others.
I dance, I skip.
I spin like a top.
I’m always happy.
It’s a heady thing
Being here on Cloud Nine.
I hope it does not rain soon.
To get a copy of the book, go to jpascalcreations.com
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