- Home
- poetry
- biography & autobiography
- Eternal Love
Eternal Love
Poems from the First 70 Years
Foreword by Robert L. McCreary OFM
Imprint: Resource Publications
The great love stories in history and fiction often somehow ended in tragedy or loss, which Lolita Jardeleza always thought was sad. Why were there no stories of great romances between ordinary, everyday people who married each other, raised children, paid mortgages, had spats, became grandparents--even great-grandparents--had arthritis, and used walkers? Romances lived and loved in "normal lives" are the real ones. These loves didn't go up like a burst of fireworks but burned on like stars, year after year, unabated, soul-satisfying, deliciously nourishing, and mind-blowing day after day. Jardeleza offers hers as proof.
Lolita Jardeleza is the joyful mother of eleven children, grandmother of forty-six, and great-grandmother of thirty-eight—and counting. She is a professed Secular Franciscan who has taught and counseled students at the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland since 1979.
“Love poems, at their finest, remind us of what is indestructible in ourselves and our world. In this fine collection of ecstatic poetry—alternately addressed to her dear, departed husband and the Divine—Jardeleza’s undying love poems demonstrate that, in the immortal words of Ezra Pound: ‘What thou lovest well remains, / the rest is dross / What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee / What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.’”
—Yahia Lababidi, author of Where Epics Fail
“This baring and sharing of Lolita’s soul-in-love is definitely a must read for all who would dare to plunge into the sea of love in all its glorious reality and splendor!”
—Enid Sevilla, Loyola Productions, Inc.
“Seventy years. Seventy extraordinary poems about relationships—spousal, filial, relationship with oneself; and informing everything, relationship with the Creator. The pieces focus on day-to-day life, but the collection also challenges us to rediscover, participate, and celebrate in the mystical in the ordinary.”
—Paul Jackson, author of A Moment in Paradise
“In Eternal Love, Lolita Jardeleza’s wise, generous poems trace her long marriage to her beloved Jack. She describes their love ‘like a star—a quiet, shining certitude.’ . . . Hers is a voice of gratitude and grace.”
—Margaret Mackinnon, author of The Invented Child