Customer Reviews:

• "Marie's The Best of the Ivy Collection is probably my favorite of all her chapbooks for the simple fact that I love compilations and it truly contains some of her very best work. Summers, a natural talent, enthralls the reader with delightful descriptions at every turn of the page. Her poetry is often soft and romantic and always flowing with the magic of her imagination. I recommend this chapbook to anyone who appreciates fine poetry." - Andrea Dietrich

• "In Volume 4 of the Ivy series, Marie captures the best of the best! If you haven't read the first three volumes, you should. The 4th one is definitely a must have for all poetry lovers. It helps to get the first three volumes, and this one is a great purchase. A great read and collection! Don't delay, get yours today! Great one Marie!" - Sally Ann Roberts

• "In two words - Simply Beautiful. Marie's words gently dance off the pages in an effortless flow and come to life softly caressing the senses. "Reflections of Silence" one of my many favorites." - Joanne Olivieri, Author of Red Lanterns

• "Marie Summers is a prolific poet whose creative voice is equally effective regardless of poetic style. She records the small natural wonders around her in the everyday world, comments on life in ways both whimsical and profound, and feeds her readers' senses with words.

In "The Ivy Moon" she contemplates our lunar orb and its effect on earth. I chose one verse in excerpt:

        She longs for the soft touch of nature
        To landscape ashen despair in lushness
        Where yellow-green English ivy vines
        Creep around milken moonbeams of light

"Rainshine" is a hopeful, joyful opus to summer rain. In this excerpt, readers can see and feel the response of dry earth and wilted flowers or trees as soft rain relieves their thirst:

        The willows steadily weep in silence
        While sunflower's smiles are splendidly loud
        There is rainshine dancing upon the air
        And rainbows are its colorful reflection

Even the most creative spirit languishes from time to time. Words won't form; paint fails to translate feelings to canvas. This verse from "Abstract Emotions" addresses creativity's dry spell:

        The taste of ash, heavy upon the tongue
        Death out for a moonlight swim
        The smell of static in the wintry air
        Brings no reassurances this night
        Mirrors swallow reflections whole
        Rewriting the world with illusions

"Written" is the poet's legacy, a reflection of the sleepless nights, crumpled paper, heartbreaks and joys delivered to print. The last verse reveals the end result:

        Growing older with maturing lines
        On life's graying 8.5" X 11",
        Realizing I'm no longer the writer;
        I have now become the poem.

Marie Summers writes and supports poetry and poets in spirit and in actuality. She and her husband James maintain an online poetry guild and publish two popular quarterly poetry journals: Shadow Poetry Quill Quarterly and White Lotus, a Journal of Haiku and Senryu Poetry. Their website at www.shadowpoetry.com features more poetry plus resources for poets." - Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review

• "To drift among a poet's thoughts, invited into sensual insights and enwrapped in pictorial personal revelations, is the literary treat we find in Summer's The Best of the Ivy Moon Collection.

Summer's personal unification with nature reveals her sense of this partnership, as depicted in her opening phrase from Wind (fragment):
        Early morning has risen from her deep slumber,
        and I have done the same with heavy eyes.

And, again - further on in the same poem:

        The wind runs her hand down my cheek as she passes by.
        It is a sweet caress, mirroring that of your touch.

In an excerpt from Reflections of Silence, this poet's words are anything but silent, as she adeptly supplies us with these heartwarming phrases:
        But no plentiful groves have I found
        To harvest the sweetness of my love onto paper
        These lines echo with emptiness
        My ink refusing to be spilled
        A wanting to express not just mere words
        Yet written thoughts of desire, passion
        But if they can't be spoken, written aloud
        Then how will I, a poet, explain this beauty
        To share with others, ourselves, the future....

How, indeed, could it be better stated? Perhaps Inside the Living offers further deep insight into this poet's soul, as we read such vital phrases as:
        Within the soul there is a yearning for love
        smoldering with great heat
        Growing with intensity over time
        Knowing that two where there is only one
        would fill the last hidden piece to a complicated puzzle--

There is much to ponder, appreciate and associate with in this gem of a chapbook, which has found a special place in my permanent home library." - Jan Turner