Warbler
Available for Purchase
Warbler, Jane Schapiro’s new book of poems, is an achingly beautiful paean to family, friendship, love, and memory. It is also a searing reminder that loss, illness, and grief must play their parts as well.
The book has an organic feel, from line to line, from poem to poem. We are pulled into human connection and human frailty. We hear the rabbi say, “Even the blank spaces / are God given” so we keep looking as we move into middle age for peace, for less anxiety, for less pain. Some days “in the mirror, / she’ll spot her former self like a star, / reflecting a fire long since burned out.” And then, “the veil lifts, / reveals the world as a luminous bride . . . / Ah, sweet life. Sweet, inviting life.” These poems stay in the mind and heart and invite rereading again and again. Warbler sings of hard and beautiful truths in a singular voice.
—Deirdre Neilen, Editor The Healing Muse
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Nautilus Book Award Winner
Jane Schapiro is the author of three books of poetry, Tapping This Stone (Winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Award, 1995), Let The Wind Push Us Across (Antrim House 2017), and Warbler (Kelsay Books, 2020). Her nonfiction book Inside a Class Action: The Holocaust and the Swiss Banks (University of Wisconsin, 2003) was selected for the Notable Trials Library. Her chapbook, Mrs. Cave’s House, won the 2012 Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Ars-Medica, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, The Women’s Review of Books, Yankee, among others. She lives in Fairfax, VA.
"Sometimes In The Morning" is an excerpt from Let The Wind Push Us Across.
Photo by Shin-ichi Kumanomido
Sometimes in the morning
before opening my eyes,
I dream of our tent,
that tiny green dome.
From behind its walls
thin as skin, I hear birds,
leaves, a brush of wind.
I yearn for that waking,
that untethered dawn
when unzipping the door
I leaned into the world.
About Jane Schapiro
Featured In
Awards and Recognition:
Nautilus Book Award Winner (2021, Warbler)
Sow’s Ear Poetry Chapbook Competiton Winner (2012, Mrs. Cave's House)
Notable Trials Library Selection (2003, Inside a Class Action)
The Washington Writers' Publishing House Book Competition Winner (1995, Tapping This Stone)
Publications:
Beltway Poetry Quarterly, "Cemetery"
The Healing Muse, "Prayer for the Status Quo"
Prairie Schooner, "First Lesson in Faith"
Ars Medica, "My Cross-Legged Monk"
The American Journal of Poetry, "Heartland"
The Sun, "My Friend and Bruce Springsteen"
Interviews:
Cardigan Press, "My First Fan Letter"
Northern Virginia Magazine, Warbler
Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things, Let the Wind Push Us Across
Washington Writers Publishing House, Tapping This Stone
Nautilus Book Award Winner
Nautilus Book Awards is held in high-regard for recognizing and promoting outstanding print books in several dozen genres that nurture positive change to co-create a Better World.
Warbler won silver in the category of death/dying grief/loss.
"When you write, you're free to encounter the world the way you want to."
Published Work
Cover Art: Rita Blitt, Fire Bird from the Music Celebrating Dorianna series, 1999. Acrylic and oil on canvas, 50 x 60 in. Rita Blitt Legacy Collection, Mulvane Art Museum, Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas.
Warbler
ISBN: 978195232623
Poetry
Steeped though it is in grief and loss, glory shines through in Jane Schapiro’s new poetry collection, Warbler. As she writes in the book’s epigraph, Tears are the soul bathing itself. There is much melancholy beauty in the book’s dirges, and toward the end, splendor has the last word. In the book’s penultimate poem, azaleas bloom in an explosion of color, from the dark “tangle of shrubs / that spawned such a glorious sight.”
- Rennie McQuilkin, CT Poet Laureate (2015-2018)
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Let The Wind Push Us Across
ISBN-978-1-943826-23-0
©2017 Antrim House
Poetry
"Her book is a tour de force, a heart-felt literary achievement. Poignant and refreshing, it is mandatory reading for those who believe that Adventure is not found in a guidebook and Beauty is not on the map."
- Renny Russell, author of On the Loose and Rock Me on the Water
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Mrs. Cave's House
Vol.XXIII, No. 1 © 2013 Sow's Ear Poetry Review
Poetry
Winner of the 2012 Sow's Ear Chapbook Competition.
Individual poems published in The Panhandler, Prairie Schooner,
Southern Humanities Review, Southern Poetry Review,
The Southern Review, Yankee.
Contact author to order
Inside a Class Action
ISBN-0-299-19330-6
©2003 University of Wisconsin Press
Nonfiction
"A must read for anybody interested in the details of how a group of dogged individuals uncovered the truth involving Swiss banks and the Holocaust"
- Kenneth R. Feinberg, adjunct professor of law, Georgetown University Law Center
"With a mastery of the legal issues and a keen eye for the human drama, Schapiro has made the intensity of the historic litigation come alive"
- Michael Berenbaum, director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and author of The World Must Know
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Tapping This Stone
ISBN 0-931846-47-1
©1995 Washington Writers' Publishing House
Poetry
Winner of the 1995 Poetry Book Competition
"Read the poem "Carcinoma" and discover how Jane Schapiro can infuse the domestic with ferocity and terror. Read "in my other life" for how she can find the poetry in pain, the sympathy in the imaginary. And "Postpartum" for how life can still be touched by myth in our dim, sad age. A fine book.
- C.K. Wiiliams
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