This week on Streets Ahead it’s the turn of Miriam Hurdle and her book ‘Songs of Heartstrings: Poems of Gratitude and Beatitude‘:

Songs of Heartstrings plays the melancholy tune of the suffering and transcending to the melody of serenity and peace. It is a road traveled with optimism, hope and appreciation amid heartache circumstances and an unpredictable cancer. It also celebrates true love and fulfilling relationships.

Hurdle in her poetry collection includes nine themes: Songs of Nature, Songs of Dissonance, Songs of Physical Healing, Songs of Marriage, Songs of Parenthood, Songs of Tribute, Songs of Reflections, Songs of Challenge, and Songs of Inspiration. Each of these themes covers various aspects of her life experience. Many poems are illustrated with her photos and watercolor paintings.

The poems in this collection are inspiring to the mind, heart and spirit. The readers will resonate with these experiences.

Review:

5 stars by Frank Hubeny

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
As I woke this morning what came to my mind was Miriam Hurdle’s watercolor in the middle of her book introducing the “Songs of Parenthood” section. In the watercolor you see the backs of a mother and her child walking away hand-in-hand. The peacefulness of those two summarize my experience of this book: one woman, since there is always a perspective, and a world of others creating blessings as they walk together through life.

The next poem, “Beautiful Tiny Baby”, presents the story of the author risking her own life when offered an experimental drug that would give her premature baby a better chance to breathe upon birth. That decision focused the many willingly-taken risks involved in giving birth in one decisive moment of “Yes”.

That’s all I could ever want – that watercolor and that poem – for this book to be worth a favored place in my memory.

But there’s more. Here are two others, among many, worth mentioning for their memorable descriptions. In “Chill and Shiver” the author presents her helplessness while waiting for the manifestation of an expected side-effect of a drug. In “Loved and Missed” she describes a neighbor’s tears of guilt and grief at the tragic death of her pet.

Miriam Hurdle’s presentations of the world through poetry, photography and art are beautiful gifts of awareness.