In End Rhymes for End Times Toni Ortner uses a wide variety of genres to dazzle the reader. She addresses the urgent issues of our times, history, and visions of the future. In “Lucid Dream” a survivor of the Apocalypse speaks. “Night Prayers,” “Report,” and “Midnight in the Garden of Grief “are reports transmitted from Ground Zero. A dry sense of humor surfaces in letters of ex-lovers who use titles of novels to express feelings while the Bad Girl Ditty is sung by a l6 year old. Venice implores us to visit before she sinks into the Adriatic; Marilyn Monroe appears along with a recipe that mimics sex. This book succeeds in causing the readers to not only reflect on the major issues of our times but to laugh and that is no small feat.
“In Traveling, A Perspective in spare tight language, Toni Ortner’s poems travel from an almost idyllic journey over the Alps- wine and bread, the beauty and joy of laughing monks in red hurling snowballs, to a jolting terrifying change. This trip is about a divorce and it leaves the reader suddenly in a new country, As the language is pared down even more, it is as if the woman is remodeling herself, becoming new, and letting go of what she cannot keep. Women will identify with such ragged, unexpected, shattering changes.”- Lyn Lifshin
” In Traveling, A Perspective Toni Ortner moves us through geography of loss. They navigate by a tragic and cold star.”- Tim Mayo
“Listen to the voices of women poets, painters and friends in the winds of blood and ash. Thank you Toni for stirring the dying embers of the sacred fire to bless the tribe.” – Terry Hauptman
ISBN-13: 978-1728860336, 80 pages, $17
