Arupa Chiarini

Arupa Chiarini is a poet and playwright in Gainesville, Florida. I found her book, The Ancestors Are Calling Down the Rainbow, published by Carl Mautz Publishing, in my local library. This collection focuses on her ancestry by giving voices of past generations of relatives their voice through poems. The voices are intriguing, relatives speak of their life and what their souls feel like after death.
In one of the beginning poems, “Lucina Hartsorne Whitaker Teft” the lines describe a unique feeling of aging: “I got so old I felt like/a piece of dandelion fluff that might/blow away in the wind.”
The poems bring forth family dysfunction and the individuals’ voices of the bullies and the victims, the poems a process of healing over a century of wounds.
“Linton Teft” was a young man who died on his way home after war in France and had a difficult relationship with his father as described in the poem. I particularly like the lines “My father said I was going to hell,/I hoped hell would be a little like/October and the hard cider would be sweet and cold.”
I enjoyed reading this collection of poems about family and skeletons released from their closets. The idea that you can envision the minds of relatives gone so long ago is not an easy one to approach in any medium so I consider Ms. Chiarini to have strong guts to take on such a project.
I could not find much on the web about her, however. You can purchase this book by Amazon.com through the link I’ve provided if you are interested, however.

http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-are-Calling-Down-Rainbow/dp/1887694099

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by and reading. Tomorrow is another poetry web-site.

P.S. Thanks for those of you who took the time to answer how many places you’ve sent poems. I wish you luck on all your submissions, may they receive rave reviews and acceptances!