Conversing with Dragons: A Celebration of Life and Art by Robyn Weiss

When I read her manuscript for the first time, I was unprepared for the concrete images: the sap from a tapped maple, the houses and butterflies and rooms she shows us. I didn't expect mature observances from someone so young. Robyn is engaged in the world through these poems. In the clever parody of Poe, in her imagined banter at a men's shelter, and other narrative poems, we find her examining, critiquing, exploring the world, the people in it, and her relationship to it. We find her taking on characters in persona poems where she molds her voice into those of husbands, wives, laborers, and vagabonds. She resists the common urge of young writers to shut out the world and look only inward for voice Barbara DeCesarePoet and Writerauthor Jigsaw EyeSore" often by the time our child reaches her teen years, that door is closed to us and we have very limited access to our child's view of the world. Robyn's writings give us a portal into the mind of a teen confronted with life and her views of the ever-widening world around her."Jacki Edens