Böcker av Sally Albiso

In the poetry chapbook, The Fire Eater and the Bearded Lady, the reader is invited into the world of an old-time circus/sideshow. Each poem is in the persona and voice of various circus performers, both human and animal, employees, and spectators-who are also complicit in the acts they see. From roustabout to elephant, lion tamer to clown, the circus exposes us all.

"I knew the story already, but I rushed through part one, as if it were a who-dun-it, waiting as Albiso in her well-chosen words and poignantimages tracks the elusive tumor and its hopeful demise. I knew the outcome already, but, facing her death, Albiso gracefully turns not towhat will happen, but to every direction the soul travels as it lives and contemplates. In heightened language, she explores angels and birds,trees and light, Judaism and flight, letting each beloved experience count. The last poem reflects on lines from Neruda to lift us finally into''a radiance that can''t be subdued.''" ~ Alice Derry, author of Hunger"What is it we expect from death?" Sally Albiso asks in her poem "After the Neighbor''s Dog Dies." In her final book, Light Entering My Bones, shechronicles the process of dying, the pain of cancer treatment, and how to inhabit a body she knows will not survive...What time she has left, shemeasures by the rhythms of the natural world, as if this is the only way she can inhabit a body that has turned against her: ''I cough up feathers/and dream of singing/light entering my bones.''...The poems in the book never descend to self-pity, but rather find compassion for her husband,the one who will be left behind...At their core, these are love poems... Brave, articulate, with a sharp curiosity, these poems take us step by stepthrough a journey we know will be our own. At times painful to read, you will emerge from the spell of this book with a renewed appreciation andcompassion for your own brief life." ~ Karen Whalley, author of My Own Name Seems Strange to Me

Relationships, nature, art, love, loss, and beauty---all come to the forefront in the exquisitely rendered poems of Sally Albiso's Moonless Grief. A poem from Moonless GriefCantorLong ago, wolves sang here with such triumph they were destroyed. Now coyotes penetrate the dark with their hunger, reach through glass, and this hour's supplication still greater, its tenor both animal and human. Is it the Sasquatch of local lore bellowing as if to make ears bleed? Roosting among cedars like a bird crying out for another of its kind, bipedal stance encouraging a tongue that ladles words? Or can it only hoot and scream, be taught to sign with furred hands that shatter a two-way mirror? The howling continues to gnaw at wind. I lean toward the voice, let it wash over me like a moonless grief, listen as if I might answer.