"Alone In Harmony"

Raised in Paradise, Anna Quimpo Maguire published "Searching For The City Of Love" in 2016, when she was eighteen. Since then she has established Three States of Mind (threestatesofmindpress.com), "an inclusive poetry press," with presentations scheduled in Los Angeles and beyond.

Her new book features nearly sixty short poems "about personal struggles and finding self-love through it all. … This book is intended to help others find peace in being alone."

"Alone In Harmony" ($12.99 in paperback from Three States of Mind Press) is borne out of the poet's realization that strength comes, perhaps can only come, from wrestling with those things that appear good at first but that turn and bite us.

The opening poem, "Gone," sets a somber mood.

"I have lost myself these days/," the poet writes. "It all comes out to play/ I have killed the life inside/ Or is it trying to hide/ I have taken in too many lines/ that are going to kill me over time/ I do not know where I stand/ I do not know who I am."

Drugs bite back. But "lines" has a larger reference, to all the come-ons we are prone to fall for. Even the well-meaning are not especially helpful. In "What I Have Dealt With," the poet says, "You think you know me/ When I do not even know me/ … You think you met me/ When I do not even get me…."

In response, the poet moves inward, toward "Self-Love," which contrasts with others' social expectations. 

"I cannot love myself/ When I have to give it to everyone else/ I have been too selfless/ It is time to be selfish." In "Giving Up, the poet asserts, "I am the creator of my own fate/ In my hands is a clean slate." 

But life is not so easy. In "Darkness," "I am searching for a high/ Dying a little every time/ All I need is love/ I pray, looking above/ This is hurting far too much/ Living day to day and such/ Let me find the light/ Let me get things right."

There is painful self-discovery along the way, but, in the end, a ray of hope, a way forward.