Wendy Kochenthal 
Between Sleep and Awake 

PART 1
Asleep in Fantasy

He was not who I dreamed he was and I was unconscious in my fantasy. Past lives
ignited the fi re of our connection. Without our past history and my family, my inner child would not have created this fantasy. But these past lives and my childhood were real. I needed to be asleep in fantasy, in order to fall in-between sleep and awakeand awaken to reality.

Wendy Kochenthals poems shower us with insight, passion, and the wisdom of the heart. Her imagery is superb and her honesty is courageous as she leads the reader forward, deeper and deeper into self-realization. Wendys talent for crafting and painting with words is mirrored in her creative pottery. This collection represents the best of a truly artistic life!
Laura Lee Perkins, MS, musician, writer, spiritual intuitive

Wendy Kochenthals intimate and powerful poems take the reader on a lyric journey into the darkness of childhood as experienced through the present lens of a poet and potter. Each image is a unique container of color of the poets vivid imagination.
This collection demonstrates the surprise of one art being told through anotherone stage of life literally re-visioned through later wisdom. Passion, death and birthinterwoven, create a tapestry to treasure.
Katherine Soniat, author of Th e Swing Girl and A Raft, A Boat, A Bridge

In her latest collection of poems, Between Sleep and Awake, Wendy Kochenthal leads us on a journey through one of lifes most sublime points of transition. She paints a remarkably rich landscape of the inner world of thought, hope, dreams, longing and inspiration; all brilliantly woven into a tapestry of prose, allegory, and playful wordsmithing. This collection is inspiring, provocative and a true joy to readit is a do not miss for all of us who love to dance in the spaces between.
Dr. Brad Rachman, author, lecturer, healer

About the author

Wendy Kochenthal lived in New York City as a child and young adult, fled to the Maine woods and ocean and now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Spirit, intuition and life experience knowing the depths of grief and the soaring of joy are the backbone of her poems. She has explored the tools of craft and studied writing with various teaching poets in the U.N.C.Asheville Great Smokies Writing Program. Playing with words, ideas and feelings while creating poems and crafting clay pots are her passions which clarify her understanding of life. I am a potter and a poet painting my feelings around spinning pots, carving my inner spaces into wet clay, writing my deep truth in poetry and most important, learning how to play. Wendy self published her first book of poetry, In Love with Words and Clay and a chapbook, Journey Down Under (New Zealand), following her mothers death.