Two Seasons

Jeanne Powell's latest collection of poetry entitled Two Seasons must rank among her best work, either poems or essays. These poems are inspiring and inspired because of their uncanny ability to transmit genuine feelings of rage and love, justice and injustice, with an eloquence and power that few contemporary American writers can match. Her gifted "word dancing" comes across forcefully yet gracefully in both oral recitations and on the written page. When I heard Jeanne deliver in public one of the exquisite poems from Two Seasons, called "Dual Face of Fear," I was stunned at the impact it had on the audience. Yet no one could have been more deeply moved than I because, as a professor who has often employed poetry to convey complex theories over many years, I could appreciate how, in a single poem, she managed to communicate the fierce emotional realities of the human experience.