Toni Ortner

A White Page Demands Its Letters Toni Ortner

Poetry. IN A WHITE PAGE DEMANDS ITS LETTERS, Toni Ortner records the pain of divorce and other loss. The poetic cycle, Dream Sequence, placed here in chronological order, has a raw intensity that strikes the reader like a knife in the heart. The poet must invent a new self in order to survive. The book is a sequel to Traveling, a Perspective, published by Kelsay Press.

Toni Ortner's chapbook, A WHITE PAGE DEMANDS ITS LETTERS, reflects a mature poet who has grown into her wisdom. Ortner is at the height of her powers as she casts her critical eye from Zen to war and the holocaust. The work ranges from dense prose poems of family life to short haiku-like pieces devastating in simplicity: (and life was not a cracked shell / with a dead embryo / a trickle of blood). A WHITE PAGE DEMANDS ITS LETTERS is a treat to be savored on those long nights when nothing satisfies as deeply as finely-wrought poetry. --Betsy Snider