Under the Pomegranate Sun

Melissa Hobbs supervised a team who dedicated themselves to help injured workers heal and re-enter the work world. After a career with State Compensation Insurance Fund, she returns to poetry, where she once began her writing career at Kent State University in Ohio. She is published across the U.S. Her first book brings forth pomegranates of hope, streams that flow under bankrupt cities and in fasting deserts, and wings to climb above the talons of predators.

Endorsements:

"These poems are a reminder that there is something to be recalled, to be cherished, behind the flickering flat screen of the workaday world-- anchored as it is in concrete and steel--with its roller coaster rides and its traffic surges and whipped up energy. Hobbs reminds us that yes, the sun can crack through clouds; yes, the poetry at the heart of the world can still hold us like the petals of a tulip tree."

--George Wallace, Writer in Residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace

"Reading Melissa Hobbs is exhilarating. Handling vowels is one thing, few can handle consonants as she does, the virility of their combinations jostles the poem into life, time and again. Combine this with a gift for simile and a range of passionate interest and you have poems to luxuriate in."

--Dan Langton, Author of During Our Walks and Personal Effects

"In Pomegranate Sun, Melissa Hobbs' debut collection of poems, you will discover beautifully crafted language informed by a multi-cultural spiritual vision. The author presents a world view shattered by the shootings at Kent State, where she was a university student. In her images, a powerful reverence for the natural world. In the subtext, a plea and a prayer for the planet to survive."

--Diane Frank, Author of Yoga of the Impossible and

Blackberries in the Dream House