Adding her unique touch to artistic considerations of the moon, filmmaker V. Ulea has created Lunar Rhapsody, a collection of poems and photos to delight the heart and pique the soul. Ulea’s book is a little gem that welcomes readers to the world of lunar mysteries.

“No matter what astronomers say about it, for poets and artists the moon has always remained a living creature, mysterious and mesmerizing, that watches over their dreams and determines the flux of their inspiration, even as it determines the ebb and flow of the tides,” Ulea writes in her revealing introduction.

For people like me who are fascinated by the moon, reading Ulea’s poems is like receiving messages from a soul sister. For example, In “Lunar Hypnotism,” she evokes memories of sleepless nights spent gazing at the silver orb with such lines as “The frosty window slightly gleams, I see the landscape of your dreams -- a snowy sculpture of the heart.” She follows this with “Lunar Echo,” noting that “The moon is frozen -- And stuck with its scalp to the iron vault.”

And, in a later poem, Ulea’s optimism shines through with “The moon has looked through the window, faced All discrepancies, and rolled forward.” Naturally, when considering the moon, romance must not be neglected, so Ulea also speaks of love in Lunar Rhapsody. In fact, she even dedicates the book “To Vadim, my husband, the moonlight of my life.”    

Lunar Rhapsody includes over 50 poems, each one containing powerful dramatic imagery like the examples cited above. Scattered throughout are beautiful black-and-white photographs (taken by Ulea herself) that enhance the reader’s visual pleasure. This is not surprising, considering the impressive cinematic skills she demonstrated in Four Funny Families, an unusual presentation of Anton Chekov’s most famous plays, and in About Angels etc., her short film combining ballet, poetry, myth and the Bible.  

V. Ulea, a.k.a. Vera Zubarev, is also a writer and scholar. She teaches courses on decision-making at the University of Pennsylvania and has published books of poetry, prose and literary criticism in the U.S. and Europe. Her most recent book, About Angels, About God, About Poetry, won the top book award at the International Book Fair “Green Wave.” Her cycle of poems, Letters From Another Planet, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2004.

The publisher of Lunar Rhapsody, Joe M. Ruggier, calls this book “a gorgeous addition to the literature by V. Ulea” -- and I definitely agree with him.

(For additional information concerning Lunar  Rhapsody, from MBooks of BC, Canada, send an email to jrmbooks@hotmail.com. To find out more about V. Ulea, go to www.ulita.net/ulea.)

Photo: V. Ulea