Four Poems from Ozark Crows
— Reneé Bibby
Carolyn Guinzio is an accomplished artist and writer who melds the written and graphic world into interesting hybrid pieces that are often catalogued under poetry even though the word is too paltry to capture the sensation of consuming them. A murder of crows, both dark and ghostly, crowd branches, cut across the white page, as lines of prose intersect at odd angles, giving the impression of conversation, disagreement, and the cacophony of a chorus. The crows comment on the natural world: the actual environs of their natural habitat, but also on the metaphorical one—the state of being and the relationship of oneself to another. The crows on the page are not purely graphic; they have something to say, just as the words themselves are elevated by the interplay of imagery. Is it poetry? Is it art? It doesn’t matter. The harmony of the words and images is sublime.