Böcker av Toni Ortner

Toni Ortner's chapbook, Focused Light from a Distant Star, is a collection of 39 ekphrastic poems and prose poems. Most were inspired by the works "created by women in the last two centuries," says Ortner in her Preface including Natalya Goncharova, Frida Kahlo, Louise Nevelson, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kiki Smith. But men, too, are represented most notably with poems on Pieter Bruegel's The Magpie on the Gallows and Storm at Sea, which concludes with the lines, "The heavy schooner founders in the waves/ We hear the sound of splintered wood and screams."-J. D. Solonche, author of 31 books of poetry and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize"The poet indulges useless subjective emotions" is what they said of Pasternak, who yet laid bare the soul of half a nation, and so does Toni Ortner who exhumes a rich heritage of half a culture of women artists."They are unknown but they lie in the rough basement, For who else built the stubborn structure of language, And rose against a silent melancholy and a dumb despair?"In an age seemingly content to express itself with emotions, here are relics of the numinous beams and sinews focused from a different star; addressing, challenging, and recharging forgotten or marginalized batteries for the life of our times. This is the reportage of the soul for what we cannot express will oppress us.-Phil Innes, publisher of Vermont Views Magazine

Toni Ortner's Daybook V, Change of Season, documents the daily thoughts of the Vermont poet and writer who reflects on life in the times of COVID. Uplifting but tinted with the bleakness of the era, Change of Season, blends both poetry and prose in her diary of reflections and is infused with the beauty of Vermont illustrator Linda Rubenstein's colorful works.

Toni Ortner's Daybook III, Morning Is Long Since Gone infuses her inner life's dreamscape, her singing tree with realities that scream over the land. Ortner's surreal meditations in corridors persistent with memory evoke a world of redemption shattered in the ashes of hope. She writes in a minor key, for love, for life, with apocalyptic images that disturb and surprise. Listen, as Ortner's waves rhythmically wash over us, like murmured prayers trapped in frozen rivers, crossing borders into a metaphysical disturbance in the field. She invokes: Is this what it means to grow old,To fold space around you like a cloak.Terry HauptmanAuthor/Poet of On Hearing Thunder, The Indwelling of Dissonance, and The Tremulous Seasons, a triptych of poetry books from the North Star Press

';The title poem, ';Entering Another Country,' is dedicated to a male friend who has died. There are exuberant, rich landscapes of imagined travel, journeys into the visual worlds of Grandma Moses and Rousseau, and the painful realization that what the poet means by travel is change and growth, the raw experience of self-birthing, a process into a place as unknown as the death place of her friend. Here Ortner connects with her female heritage. It is a courageous poem of breaking out, and the unfamiliar terrain into which this takes her almost robs the poet of speech.' Helen Cooper, Motheroot Journal

“The chapbook is about the experience of being in a mental hospital although it could have been about being in any kind of prison. The specifics are here, and it is well written.” —Judy Hogan, Motheroot Journal

Dream in Pienza was originally published by the Timberline Press in a hand-set and hand-printed limited edition. The title poem, written in Rome, sings of the passion of unrequited love in another century. From birth through resurrection, we sweep our separate shores for sight of stars. Although the angels may have left us to our devices, we become the measure of what we believe. This is God's gift to each of us.

Real Stories is a writing and reading text that works. The method Toni Ortner discusses is classroom-tested and designed to meet the needs of multi-cultural high school students. It contains three sections: ';The Process of Writing' covers the basic building blocks of writing. ';Time Savers for Grammar and Punctuation' includes types of sentences, how to find and eliminate runs-ons, comma splices and fragments, comma use, nouns, capitalization, direct quotes, verb tenses, and irregular verbs, practice exercises, an answer key, and tests. ';The Reader' contains students' personal stories for analysis and discussion. Real Stories helps students use words to empower and enrich their lives.