Nancy Berg

Oracles for Night-blooming Eccentrics Nancy Berg

"Right out of the headlines, participant in, on and of the edges of the dangerous and 'bejeweled' world, listener of sages ubiquitous, public radio opinionated, cable tv hysterical, spinning on the deck of the luxury liner of night itself with an 'Excedrin habit' and a penchant for small dogs and oracular insomnia, this is Nancy Berg's poetry, seeking its soulmate inside an emerald and unlike anything else being written, 'crackling like early electricity,' heavy with art. When will this walking full-production Hollywood musical of a poet come to your town and make you a deal deep inside, 'tangling all arteries' with her abundant literary grace and charm? You can only hope and dream. But she is here now in this booty-kicking little number. So, pick it up, try it on. It looks great on you." - Rustin Larson, author of Crazy Star and Islands "If Kafka is accurate in his assertion that a book should serve as an ax for the frozen sea within us, and I believe he is, then Nancy Berg's poems accomplish this exact task by a gentler, and nurturing alchemy. Oracles for Night-Blooming Eccentrics holds us to its breast, rocking us, whispering its lullabies of disappoint, hope, and creation, urging us to warm. I came to it chilled by the world and was thawed by the heat of its plangent and triumphant honesty. Such is the power of Berg's truly fine poems." -Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life, The Fruit of Stone, and Where Rivers Change Direction "You don't have to be eccentric-night-blooming or otherwise-to savor Nancy Berg's enchanting vision. It helps, though, to want to see as eccentrics see, with unfiltered eyes and deconditioned minds and hearts as open as canyons to sublime, mysterious delights dressed up as ordinary. This is poetry as revelation." - Phil Goldberg, author of This is Next Year, Roadsigns and The Intuitive Edge "Not easy, one would imagine, to write a volume on the intersection between longing, being in the moment, metaphysics, and love as a unifying theory of consciousness. Perhaps more difficult to do so with such sensitivity and wry humor. Nancy's done more than that in her poems, beautifully centered in such humanity, weaving entire stories into single poems that also display life lessons. . . Her poems are beautiful, mesmerizing, and instructive - they communicate so much about passion for life and beauty, for living with longing for the eternity of the moment and for finding that moment with clarity, insight, passion, and joy, that I feel more alive having read them. Can't think of a better place to begin to practice some conscious living and detachment than by reading Nancy Berg's Oracles for Night-Blooming Eccentrics." - Steven D'Ambrose, Writers' Guild of America "Upon first reading, Nancy Berg's poetry affected me greatly. Upon repeated readings over the following months, it mapped out a different way of thinking about the world that is generous without limit and deep beyond measure. And upon reading Berg's manuscript so many times that it has become a dog-eared, overly-post-it-noted mess on my bookshelf, it has become clear to me that it is the very best book that I have read throughout my forties, with images that come to mind almost daily and a point of view that suffuses my life, giving me a way to live the ideals I deeply believe in." -David Groves, Executive Director of Freedom to Read, L. A., Past President of American Society of Journalists and Authors, Los Angeles