Connie Lane Williams: DANCING BACKWARDS IN TEXAS

Connie Lane Williams: DANCING BACKWARDS IN TEXAS: "Dancing Backwards in Texas had it's coming out party quiet by accident last Saturday night, April 2, 2011 at the B'Hai Temple in Austin, Texas, which is befitting the collection.  I met Peggy Lynch first at the Expressions venue there a couple of years back; I took a look at the PITA website and discovered a call for submission of poetry with a Texas Theme.  I penned the first lines of Dancing Backward at that moment, "Texas ladies have too much history / they carry their whole lives around on the tip of their tongues / dancing backwards is not easy." I think I was looking for a reason that Texas women could not write about Texas, there was just too much to say.  Then I had a revelation, why, I'd been dancing backwards all my life, no wonder it had been such a sight. 

Take a look at what some of Texas well known poets have to say about Dancing Backwards in Texas and why it appeals to the native and non-native son of the state as well, there is more to dancing backwards than meets the eye, "it is an acquired technique."

Dancing Backwards is as various in subject matter as it is in tonal nuance.  By turns poignant, philosophical, reflective, rowdy, and erotic, Williams's poems capture not only the flora, fauna and denizens of her beloved West Texas but also the vast and treacherous regions of the human heart.  What really stands out in the collection, however, is the enchanting musicality of her poetic diction.  In poem after poem and line after line, Williams "beats time to Mozart."

Larry D. Thomas

Member, Texas Institute of Letters

2008 Texas Poet Laureate

lean into these poems as you would a warm West Texas wind, a cool creek watched by a naked moon; hear the rattlers off in the mesquite, the coyotes on the ridge, the lovers in the bed of that pickup bathed in a sweat older than song; catch the whispers in the cafes, the music blaring from the bars, the holy shouts of a woman who has a keener eye for truth than a Harris’s hawk—welcome Connie Williams, a poet who sees the whole round in the proud beauty of all things

— Ric Williams, author of the award-winning book of poetry the secret book of god and the novel The Woman in Tower: Stories for the Wounded Child

An autographed copy of Dancing Backwards in Texas, published by Slough Press and edited by Dr. Charles Taylor,  may be ordered from the author, Connie Lane Williams, at 301 North 19th Street, Lamesa, Texas   79331 for $15.95 plus $4.00 shipping and handling.  Or e-mail to RedSagewoman@hotmail.com.