Customer Reviews:

• "Kaleidoscope is a beautiful showcase for delightful poetry of wisdom and inspiration. Mary Ports, an educator and lover of the arts, came to poetry late in life. However, her years of experience had prepared her with a very fertile mind. With guidance from a dear family friend and her mentor, the deceased Paul Pascal, Mary was led to draw from life's lessons the beautiful poetic thoughts that appear within Kaleidoscope. This chapbook, illustrated with clever little drawings throughout, also has epigrams of her beloved friend Pascal interspersed with her poetry on each page. Like Pascal, Mary Ports shows a strong spiritual nature. Her words of wisdom are enriched with the beauty of descriptive language. I especially enjoyed the imagery in her numerous nature poems such as "January Wind," "visitation of the Elements," "Mournful Tune" (about a song of owls) or "The Race" (in which she describes running up a hill to catch the setting of the sun.) Also she honors her mentor Pascal with poems such as "The Ride" in which she compares her time with him to a spiritual ride through the clouds on a horse. These named poems represent a mere handful of what is to be appreciated from the reading of Mary Port's book Kaleidoscope." - Andrea Dietrich

• "Being the holidays, it took me awhile to catch up with my reading, but when I did it was well worth it. Mary Ports is now one of my favorite poets. From cover to cover her creativity shines. Her nature poems are visual and so enjoyable to read. I loved "January wind" and so many others. Much like Andrea, another favorite, was "The Race" just delightful reading. I will be looking for more of Marys wonderful work." - Floria Kelderhouse

• "In reading Kaleidoscope, it seems that the creative mind of Mary Ports herself becomes the kaleidoscope through which we are shown her intricate views of life’s multiple wonders. In Home Sweet Home she welcomes us into her world, to pen down the experiences of the day:

          While in my cozy home I stay,
          The world runs by on wheels of clay.
          My heels are worn but pen runs on.
          I’ll stay at home and write a song.

In the following excerpt from Singing In The Moonlight, we grasp her enthusiastic appreciation of nature:

          As my voice travels up
          To the moon and stars
          Joyously singing melodious bars,
          It enlivens the wind
          That comes whistling along
          To carry and cradle
          My happy song.

Ports’ spiritual and compassionate insights are eloquently represented in poems such as the following two, from which I have extracted chosen lines:

                    To Heal a Wounded Soul

          God, put healing in my wings.
          Wrap them ‘round’
          A suffering soul;
          Do it now to ease the pain.

                    There Always Will Be Hope

          There will always be another day
          That comes to offer words of wisdom,
          Light that guides,
          Living waters, love divine;
          A day that offers souls a ray of hope
          And a path to trod an extra mile for God-
          That day is mine.

A fanciful Ports writes of Autumn Fairies and tickles our imaginations with this opening stanza:

          In the glow of the autumn sunset
          At the foot of a towering elm
          Sits the Queen of the Forest Fairies
          Holding court within her realm.

The plethora of interests displayed in Ports’ poetry is certainly like looking at life through a multifaceted kaleidoscope as she skillfully keeps the reader captivated through to the very last page.

In Power of a Poet’s Art, Ports writes of how being a poet feels and what a poet hopes to contribute to the world. I will close this review with the profound final words of this poem which are bound to touch the hearts and souls of poets everywhere:

          A poet seems to feel
          That something n the air
          Unseen by naked eye
          And yet, he knows it’s there.
          And when he sows his seeds of truth
          On war-torn weary nations,
          He leaves them with a gift of hope
          For future generations."

- Review by Jan Turner