A unique collection of poetry and collage

Four sample pages from the work.

Click on each one for a larger view

The poems in Bribing The Fortune Teller are fanciful, sad, amusing, storied and comprehensible. Each double-page collaged spread is themed and accompanied by a poem. The entire book has been hand-photographed, hand-assembled and printed on glossy photo paper.

This book is being offered to you at a very special sale price. The original price was $25.00 (Full color collages on every page). Now the price is a low $15.00.Please send your check, including $3.00 for postage and handling to:

Ann McGovern,

30 East 62^nd Street

New York, NY 10065

And please let me know to whom you would like your copy (copies) inscribed.

Praise for Bribing the Fortune Teller

"Dazzling bursts of passion radiate in every poem McGovern writes.  Whether the voice is lusty, or serenely cold in observation, or nakedly shrewd about human aspiration and temptation, the pleasure of her work is intense.  This is a serious poet whose eye casts light on melancholy and whose ear remembers the ecstasy of what has been lost, and gained.  Her first book, illustrated with her own collages, is spectacularly handsome--it blazes with the same passionate coloring of memory as her poems."-- Martin Tucker, Poet, Playwright, Editor of "Confrontation" magazine
   
"The collage component is inspired. It is so much more than a mere background for your poetry; it compliments it and adds a funky, perceptive insight of its own. Though each can stand on its own terms, having seen them together makes it hard for me to easily imagine either the poetry or the collage without the other. They both grow through their remarkable collaboration."--Bill Boughton, Writer & Editor
 
 "What a deep pleasure to turn the pages of Bribing The Fortune Teller--each one a bold vivid splash of color and life with a poem, a line, a phrase that moves and surprises you. I love the Maybe poems--Maybe You Are Here and Maybe Tomorrow. But there's no maybe about what McGovern has accomplished here.--Edward Pomerantz, Screenwriter, Playwright, Novelist
 
 "Your gift of words have the added exoticism of coming from all over the world."
--Valerie Harms, Author

Here are two poems from: BRIBING THE FORTUNE TELLER:

MAYBE YOU ARE HERE

Maybe you are here after all.
Ask the Mexican sun.
There is no calendar that marks your death.
You signed no contract for immortality.

Yet here in San Miguel, church bells
ring your name from dawn to deep night.
You are the courtyard treasures
hiding behind carved doors,

the lush orange trees,
the feathery fountains.
Inch by inch I seek you
among the cobblestones,

feel your skin on textured walls.
In this high place of steep hills
and dry wind, my breath struggles,
never wanting any other air
except that which you breathed.
 

WHALES WEEPING

Underwater, I hear the whales moan.
They know so much.
how to sing-talk to one another,
blow a net of bubbles to trap their food,
make love underwater,
tenderly care for their young,
chart their voyage,
and thousands of miles later,
arrive at the same place, the same time.

But why now do they moan?
Last year they sang their full repertoire?
creaks and groans,
wails and whistles.

I think I know why they moan this year.
They know that this wide ocean
they swim through is dying.
They are singing our grief for us.