Deena Metzger

La Negra y Blanca is the crowning achievement of Deena Metzger's lifetime as a novelist, poet, and playwright. On the surface, it is a meditation on memory as the narrator pieces together the bright flashes of images of her life recalled, piecing them together with the intention of creating a healing matrix that reflects a life lived in search of meaning. On a deeper level, it weaves in the history and tragedy of the Conquest's ongoing political and environmental effects on Latin America through the narrator s relationship with Victor Perera, a Guatemalan-American writer and journalist who documented the destruction of the native Lacandon tribe of Guatemala by imperialistic forces. We become acquainted with La Negra, a mysterious woman who is pregnant, but who will not give birth to her child until the world is safe enough for its continued existence, and who is the centerpiece character of a natural world struggling to survive and maintain its integrity in the midst of industrialization and the decimation of the sacred forests. Metzger has created a complex novel that weaves the personal, political, global and spiritual threads of her life into a tapestry of beauty, sorrow, transcendence, and ultimately, the assurance of a world renewed by the unwavering examination of all of its component parts to create a path into a future that promises reverence for all life.

Fugue and Commentary

La Negra Y Blanca

Brenda Peterson

Linda Hogan

Provides insight into the unique relationship that exists between women and animals and includes contributions from Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, Jane Goodall, Temple Grandin, and Barbara Kingsolver.

The Bond Between Women and Animals

Intimate Nature

A Rain of Night Birds

New and Selected Poems

Ruin and Beauty

A Fiction for Jazz Horn

Doors

In these passionate, earthy, and lyrical poems, Deena Metzger presents a new vision of the soul's difficult journey toward spirit. Fearless in her confrontation with the dark and willing to bear the light, Metzger articulates the search for the numinous worlds which hover at the horizon of vision. --Parallax Press.

Looking for the Faces of God

This novel, based on a true story, is one woman's journey out of the strictures of cultural mores and societal values of what is sane, judicious, and appropriate and into the world of the primal intelligences that churn within all of us. A girl is found in a tree, alone, seemingly frightened and unwilling to communicate with anyone. And yet she displays a certain intelligence that beckons to the woman, intrigues her with its innate and often hidden language. The woman finds herself drawn into a world of beauty and fear, intensity and passion, that eventually brings her to a new awareness of what is missing in the left-brain intelligence that so dominates our assumptions of reality. This brilliant work will bring you to the edge of what you know to be true, challenging the very tenets of your existence and opening the door to what is missing in all our lives: the awakened animal consciousness whose wild intelligence renews our passion for life, for nature, and completes our sensibilities so that we can live as equals in the web of all life as human animals, alive to the very core of our being.

Feral

The Burden of Light

Sonya Lea

Deena Metzger : an Interview

Living the Ritual

A Jewish-American filmmaker, Dina Z., courts danger in Israel when she falls for a Palestinian activist and reawakens Dinah, her biblical ancestress, who suffered a tragic fate for the crime of loving the wrong man

What Dinah Thought

The Woman who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them ; & Tree

"September 11th called this book into being.... Never before in our nation's history, not even after Pearl Harbor, has it been so clear that the voices, nature and activity of healing, peacemaking, and Council need to be called forth."Deena Metzger takes us on a journey from North America to Africa, from the stories of her life to the myths of Spirit. Travelling the Ghost River connects the world of humans to the world of souls, spirits and our ancestors. At the exact moment the World Trade Center towers were hit, Deena and others were at an ancient, sacred site in Masvingo, Africa being initiated as healers. Two stories intersected in that moment, one headed toward destruction, the other toward healing. At the intersection of these two worlds, Deena asks the question: how do we create a story with a real future in which all beings are sustained? Deena brings her knowledge and experience of healing body and soul to the issues of healing community, both locally and globally. Following the threads of September 11th, she shows us how we can understand the larger story, and awaken to ourselves. This awakening and alleviation of suffering comes through the context of kinship, of community, of Story. Story is not of our own making; it is a gift from Spirit. Deena examines the very underpinnings of Western thought, healing, and religious practices the stories that have mapped our lives and shows us how the web of interconnection contains, with the joint perspectives of indigenous mind and contemporary vision, the possibility of healing.

Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing

Entering the Ghost River

Personalized exercises help readers experience the joy of creation. In the tradition of Annie Dillard and Natalie Goldberg, writer/therapist Deena Metzger shows how writing can be a dynamic means of knowing, healing, and creating the body, mind, and spirit.

Discovering the Story of Your Life's Journey

Writing for Your Life

Poet, playwright, novelist and essayist Deena Metzger has been an inspiration to thousands of women from the first publication of Tree, the 1978 journal in which she recorded her struggle with breast cancer. In this new volume, Tree is placed in the context of Metzger's major statements on healing. This is the material from which Metzger has pioneered her acclaimed "Healing Stories," a method of inquiring into the stories we customarily tell ourselves to find the real story that may contain the key to our psychological and physical healing, forging links between our personal, political and social personas.

Essays & Pieces

Tree

Barbara G. Myerhoff

What it's like to grow older in America, as revealed by an anthropologist who listened to the stories of the elderly.

The Work of Ritual, Storytelling, and Growing Older

Remembered Lives

A Novel

The Other Hand

In the tradition of Annie Dillard and Natalie Goldberg, this resource for writers and non-writers alike shows the act of writing to be a dynamic means of knowing, healing, and creating the body, mind, and spirit.

Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou

Poetry arises from the search for sacred language that describes the awe and mystery of the real world. Deena Metzger is a contemporary poet who has aligned herself with this ancient tradition. This collection, that includes selections from her earlier books of poetry - Dark Milk, The Axis Mundi Poems, Looking For the Faces of God , A Sabbath Among the Ruins and Skin:Shadows/Silence draws on her life's work, more than forty years of devotion to the word, and aligns itself with such a quest for meaning that has increasing urgency because of the spiritual and political ruins of our time. It is no longer sufficient, she believes, for the poet to be an unacknowledged legislator of the world, for the committed poet is called to engage with full heart in the continuous activity of restoration on behalf of beauty, wisdom and the natural world. Here we meet the articulate voices of the otherwise silenced, the voices of the animals, the land and the elementals, rain, wind fire and earth, and our responsibility to them. This book combines a searing look at the horrors that we permit, the anguish of human cruelty, brutality, and indulgence, but carrying the fierce determination to live, act, and write on behalf of the soul in all its manifestations. In this collection, despair is acknowledged but not indulged, as Metzger engages in the meticulous task of reconstructing a world, informed by the past and history as language demands, but, extracting ourselves from its violence and caprices, looking toward a viable future and all its unexpected possibilities. Poetry arises from the search for sacred language thatdescribes the awe and mystery of the realworld.Deena Metzger is a contemporarypoet who has aligned herself with this ancient tradition. This collection, thatincludes selections from her earlier books of poetry – , and draws on her life’swork, more than forty years of devotion to the word, and aligns itself withsuch a quest for meaning that has increasing urgency because of the spiritualand political ruins of our time.It isno longer sufficient, she believes, for the poet to be an unacknowledgedlegislator of the world, for the committed poet is called to engage with fullheart in the continuous activity of restoration on behalf of beauty, wisdom andthe natural world.Here we meet thearticulate voices of the otherwise silenced, the voices of the animals, theland and the elementals, rain, wind fire and earth, and our responsibility to them.This book combines a searing look at thehorrors that we permit, the anguish of human cruelty, brutality, andindulgence, but carrying the fierce determination to live, act, and write onbehalf of the soul in all its manifestations. In this collection, despair isacknowledged but not indulged, as Metzger engages in the meticulous task ofreconstructing a world, informed by the past and history as language demands,but, extracting ourselves from its violence and caprices, looking toward aviable future and all its unexpected possibilities.

Deena Metzger

Books

Your next favorite book is out there