Customer Reviews:

• "How often have you pondered a rainbow, and felt its mystery? We hunt for them after a summer shower, look for them in street puddles, and wonder at their prismatic effect on storefront windows. Their elusive nature takes on many earthly forms, and yet, without boundary, cannot be contained. In her latest chapbook, Rainbow Mystique, Emily investigates the effect of rainbows on the human psyche ... and indeed the human heart. Even sound is brought into the rainbow array of wonderment in one of my favorite poems, Sound As An Artist, in which Emily says:

          Sound paints another April day...
          Raindrops begin with silver voices,
          While dozing waterfowl, clucking in their sleep,
          Dreamfully talk grays and blues and greens,
          And the muddy river bottom, stirred by the storm,
          Gurgles its yellows and reds and browns.
          A leaping trout suddenly shouts a rainbow!

                    (Excerpt: Sound As An Artist)

The reflection of rainbows on “carp swimming lazily, gleaming like underwater lights” and on the “jewel-like dragonflies” are exquisitely presented in Over The Bridge of Eloquence.

The idea of nature’s joys secretly wrapped in unsuspecting outer packaging appears in Gift-Wrapped. Here are a few lines from this extraordinary poem:

          Fear not the dark, for in it there lies Promise...
          Behind dark clouds, wait rainbows;
          Beneath black loam, wait flowers;
          And even below the surface of black thoughts,
          Are waiting crystal tears.

                    (Excerpt: Gift-Wrapped)

This contemplative poem twists half way through to indirectly address death as “the final drama”... “Waiting to hear our own name at curtain time.” And further on: “And here, too, we’ll find another rainbow, Another field of flowers, another crystal fountain.”

Rainbow Mystique contains both surface observations and the depth of uncanny perception of the mystique of life itself in its wide range of poetic beauty. I will close this review with a few lines from I Wash My Hands In The River, a poem that reads like a daily prayer and a poet’s guide to living:

          I wash my hands in the river
          And find my life.
          The jewels that fall from my fingertips
          Dazzle my senses, awakening me
          To a quicksilver mood of love.
          Where once my tears fell,
          Now humble gratitude spills.
          I wash my hands in the river
          And out of a deep despair
          Find little rainbows in my palms,

                    (Excerpt: I Wash My Hands in The River)"

–Jan Turner, author of Reflections of The Inner Eye, A Shift In Time, and soon to be released Time With You; coauthor (with Emily Romano) of Faery Folk & Fireflies


• "Emily Romano astounds me with her creativity. The original cover art on her latest chapbook, Rainbow Mystique, vibrates with intense color as the classical phoenix, so like a rainbow, rises in the eternal promise of renewal.

Inside this amazing cover is a spectrum of poetry that is sure to please. The subject matter is wide ranging even though the poems are linked by a rainbow theme, and I was delighted to find so many insightful perceptions and ranges of emotion in her poetry.

As I turned the final page to view her shaped poem of a rainbow, I felt a deep sense of wonder, rebirth, and continuity. In Emily’s words from her poem titled, A Rainbow Led Me:

          “A rainbow led me to the place
          Where I was blessed with Heaven’s grace.”

There is grace and beauty in this chapbook that readers are certain to enjoy. The images evoked by these poems will reappear like elusive rainbows to brighten many a rainy day." - Margaret R. Smith, VA