MYnd mAp, by gaye gambell-peterson, is a contemporary ars poetica, pulling together the laces of poetry, visual arts, the betrayals of failing health, the fulfillments of love and creativity.  

MYnd mAp includes 14 poems paired with lush, colorful collage artworks.  The collages carry their own narrative weight with iconic symbols in panels sequenced and overlapping to build a compelling story.  The poems, likewise, work with the elements of space, form, and time to pull the reader into intimate engagement, into a personal but universal story.    

The arc of the work is one of exploring possibilities, uncovering things that present as “a tangle / whichwayed    thatwayed” and examining them for their true nature—“a slice of parched blades / with their false softness.”  Poems build around things that might provide direction, that might lend themselves to be re-created in order to find a direction—maps, topography, origami, collages.  Each aspect of the world is unfolded, recreated, refolded for the sake of art and for the art of living.   

The language is playful, artful, transcending conventions at every turn and doing so in a way that invites the reader to new perceptions.  Even spelling is an artful tool, winking kindly at the variousness of historical English spellings by inventing even more: “though I / think often    of eddges / those eddges    where / grasse gives / way to shade- / lynds   woodlynds.” 

The appeal comes from an insistence, solid and grounded, on finding inner strength: “homely out / yet   wholeness within / The very stuff    the / vary backbone of all   I / was    meant     to    stand / for    Malady shall not / sit.”  Regardless of obstacles, these are poems that “Embrace    the route of it all” and lead the reader to do likewise.  

                                                                           ~Rebecca Ellis, Publisher, Cherry Pie Press