Overview

My book isn't named for the ballet or for the birds. It's named for black swan events, which are unpredicted, impactful occurrences. The term black swan comes from the surprising discovery of black swans after Europeans had thought for many years that all swans were white. Historical examples of black swan events include the stock market crash and 9/11. My book recounts some of my personal black swans - surprising realizations or insights that impacted my life. It consists of a series of vignettes, ranging from a childhood epiphany about the universe, to a teenager's unwitting ignorance about an earth-shattering truth, to an older woman's regret about a path not travelled. Each incident evokes an unanticipated realization, proving Kierkegaard's quote: ""Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.""

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Reviews

Kathleen Shaw writes, ""Picnics, grandparents, potato salad / mountains are evanescent."" Yet, these and more, are not fading images in her chapbook, Black Swan. As a child, she finds starlit answers ""on this dizzy spinning place""-in Sounds of Shisler Street, in remembered songs of her Cello, on a turquoise glider. As a mother, she worries about the five-year-old become a teenager, ""strong tan hands on the wheel""-about a man who was ""different before the war."" Through pantoum and prose, ode and sonnet, she colors ""a glimmer of hope,"" bringing vivid focus to dangers and delights of a life -Steve Pollack, the 2025 Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate and author of L'dor Vador-From Generation to Generation A ""black swan event"" is defined as a rare, unpredictable and significant event. In the title poem of Kathleen Shaw's chapbook, the speaker laments, ""I couldn't reach you."" In the final poem, ""Glimmer,"" she repeats ""so far away, out of reach."" These keenly observed poems draw on details that many readers will recognize. In free verse, pantoum, and persona poems, as well as wonderful odes to ordinary things like gliders and laundromats, the poet vividly evokes childhood, motherhood, longing, and grief. The poet, a ""scavenger robin,"" longs to speak through a cello, but instead finds her own music in poetry. -Faith Paulsen, author of A Color Called Harvest, Cyanometer, We Marry, We Bury, We Story or We Weep

Author Information

Kathleen Shaw is a poet, retired Assistant Professor of English at a community college, former high school teacher, volunteer writing tutor, student of watercolors and oils, and twice runner-up for Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her poetry has appeared in Anthology, Derail, Philadelphia Stories, and Schuylkill Valley Journal, as well as Art Through the Eyes of Mad Poets: An Ekphrastic Poetry Collection. She is currently working on a book of Haiku. Kathleen shares her home and her life with her husband Paul and cherishes visits with her three children and four grandchildren.

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