The Marrow of Longing by Celeste Nazeli Snowber

The Marrow of Longing by Celeste Nazeli Snowber

The Marrow of Longing by Celeste Nazeli Snowber

Celeste Nazeli Snowber’s poetry book is a collection that examines being raised by an artistic mother who survived the Armenian genocide. Her writing is intuitive and filled with flavor. From the poem “Stained Glass Love”:

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The Marrow of Longing Paperback – May 5, 2021 by Celeste Nazeli Snowber (Author)

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harp Publishing the People's Press (May 5, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 98 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1990137067
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1990137068
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.27 x 9 inches

Reviewed by LB Sedlacek

Celeste Nazeli Snowber’s poetry book is a collection that examines being raised by an artistic mother who survived the Armenian genocide.  Her writing is intuitive and filled with flavor.  From the poem “Stained Glass Love”: “I spent hours gazing / at the shades of light / the evening illuminations.”  She is able to reach the reader and put a voice to experience.  Her poems embrace yet transform.  From the poem “Seaweed Torment”:  “What if she could have kept creating / flower arrangements and paintings / danced by the sea?”  The reader will never tire of her language in these poems. 

Fragments

To piece my heritage
shards of genocide
a thousand stained glass pieces
of wounds and wombs
shimmer and illuminate.
My mom told me about her dad Mesrop
He told her, knowledge is an invisible
gold bracelet on your wrist.
My task:
to listen to fragmentia
live my life
in the poetics of parts.
I want to wear
fragments as bracelets
let the invisible
adorn me.

About the Author

Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD is a dancer, poet, writer, award-winning educator and Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Celeste creates site-specific performance and has been the Artist in Residence in the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden creating full-length performances connecting poetry and dance out of each season. Celeste also creates one-woman shows integrating voice, comedy, and dance and has performed across North America and Internationally in a variety of venues, including concerts, galleries, museums, conferences and outdoor spaces. Celeste's mother was born in Historic Armenia in 1912 before immigrating to Boston and integral to Celeste's own artistic process is excavating fragments of ancestral memory, which find their way in poems and dances. She can be found at www.celestesnowber.com

Boston-based artist and MFA, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian's drawings and paintings uniquely reflect the tension and expansiveness of being raised in dual cultures, Armenian and American. As a young child, she watched her mother cultivate the Armenian tradition of dyeing eggs red by boiling them in onion skins. In her work, vignettes of current events, history and social justice emerge from the onionskin dye on paper, stretched canvas or compressed cellulose sponge. Odabashian studies early and medieval Armenian art and architecture at Tufts University with Professor Christina Maranci, with whom she traveled to Aght'amar and Ani in Historic Armenia. Pairing her ancestral past with the present in her art is her means of fulfillment. She can be found at www.marshaodabashian.com.