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A Portrait of Paradise
Carolyn Zonailo
blewointment press
Toronto, Ontario
1983

Carolyn Zonailo’s new collection of visionary poetry features the long poem “Blue and Green”, as well as meditative and lyric poems, including a suite of poems on the female nude. Zonailo’s exploration of Jungian and psychological themes in her poetry is further explored in a section of reproductions of mandalas, drawn and painted by the author.

Critical Praise for A Portrait of Paradise

“She is a very human poet, engaging and likeable. You can feel her presence in her work…her most feminist poems are a series of portraits of ‘female nudes’. In these poems she works through a variety of roles that woman play, from ‘earth goddess’ to the ‘single mother’ to the ‘sex symbol’ to the ‘diplomatic wife’….one laughs with Zonailo’s poems but that laughter doesn’t negate the force and message of her work.”

Stephen Morrissey, Poetry Canada Review

“Her writing is sensual, rich and textured. Scenes painted with words convey a mood, a feeling…the sketches are Zonailo’s ‘search for the human place in the seemingly impersonality of the universe’. The circles ‘are not contained but always expanding’ she writes.”

Elaine O’Farrell, The Vancouver Courrier