Reviews

Cambio Journal June 2000

Deerfield Beach Times Florida, June 2000

CAMBIO Journal
June 2000

Featured Author:  D.N. Sutton
crossing the spans of time

by Marta Braunstein, CAMBIO Journal managing editor

She stood in the room with grace, a particular demeanor and elegance.  I knew this woman had character; the kind of character that is developed by selfless dedication. We were introduced and held a brief conversation.  Her melodic, soft voice; her perfect diction; her kind smile also revealed a very sensitive human being, intelligent and perceptive.  She was a free spirit. I learned she was a poet and almost intuitively realized she had to be a poet with a special voice.

We would meet again, some months later. It was the beginning of a friendship, based on admiration for both the person and the artist.

D. N. Sutton has been writing poetry since age seven and published her first poem at age eleven in the Miami Herald.  She published her first book of poetry fifty years ago and has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines since.

She earned a degree in psychology and a M.A. in Drama and was a professional photographer's model, a poetry editor, active in radio publicity and public relations. She has written plays and a course "Presentation of self" (all dreams can in some measure be fulfilled) taught in colleges and universities, that has inspired her students to bring the beauty and joy they wish for into their lives.

Sutton's poetry is about joy: the joy of living.  There is a stunning force throughout her work, devoid of sentimentalism, that reveals an uncommon spirituality.  Her love poems have been described as "romantic," or for the "romantic heart."  I must confess I was a bit uneasy with the use of such stereotyped term as a description for her poetic style, particularly because her poetry is subtle and deceivingly simple, something many a contemporary aspiring poets are trying to avoid. But a more careful consideration of Sutton's poems can actually restore a more accurate perception of the word "romantic":  verses marked by the imaginative and emotional appeal of a fusion between flesh and spirit, an adventurous quest from the concrete realities of our immediate world into higher plains of perspective; an adventurous, remote, mysterious world experienced through the realization of an archetypal concept of the self; a pluralistic self in a pluralistic universe.  In this sense, Sutton is a modern empiricist with a deep-rooted faith in man's ability to experience the happiest interrelationships and furthermore, that this experience -however subjective- forges our personal reality, becoming a source of truth, strength and harmony for the individual despite possible adversity.

Sutton has an interesting style. Her verse seems effortless, as a result of effective use of space as a factor producing rhythm, a visual image through line distribution. Sutton utilizes shorter verse for a more dynamic expression, an exalted mood. By using the spatial configuration of the poem she responds to her inner need of expression and establishes a different kind of contact with the reader, who visualizes de poem through the drawing of her verbal disposition. In the poems that are selected for her book "Love," the verses are linked in groups, what is a good technique for the subject. There is a balanced mix of existential and sensorial elements, interesting images and metaphors.  Some of her sonnets have a particular quality; they make you forget they are sonnets -this is unusual and difficult to do.

You can read D.N. Sutton's poems online: Read poetry.

D.N. SUTTON generously donates all proceeds from her poetry books to helping the born-deaf to learn to read. In fact Deaf artist Kevin Clark has translated one of her poems, One Harbor, into American Sign Language. The soul site is designed to help the Literacy Project for the born-deaf. For more information, visit: www.soulsite.com.

 

Reviews

Cambio Journal June 2000

Deerfield Beach Times Florida, June 2000