“A varied but cohesive collection that nicely balances the big and small pictures….If a reader were to pick up this collection and flip to a random poem in its first half, he or she might peg Sharpe (Coming and Going Love, 2010) as a poet with plenty to say about violence and poverty, iniquity and inequality. A peek into the book’s second half, however, might give a reader the impression of a finely focused writer tuned to appreciate subtle social exchanges and their implications. A full reading…reveals [how] the voice that laments suffering and military action gets blended with a more humorous voice that muses on bathroom lines and artificial knees….[Sharpe’s] voice is critical but tinged with hope; her words are sharp but chosen wisely. She seems to see something complete beyond life’s fragments—the idea that a world with war, poverty and inequity may not make sense, but like a partial rainbow, there’s still a touch of beauty in its imperfection.” –Kirkus
SNAILS
must think the world a very dangerous place. They’re seldom without a shell for refuge. At the least touch they rush inside, but not for long. Bored, bold, curious, hungry—soon they’re extending those soft but eager antennae and all else follows. Snails excrete a track that some call slime. But, mornings, when websilk glitters wit dew, what I find are traceries of silver.
REFUGEE CAMP
Hunkered down in camps, wrapped in borrowed blankets, sinking at last into velvety sleep, the women well remember (and try, for the children, to invoke) a land where trees bent with flowers and fruit and people cried only (so it seems now) from an overdose of the drug once known as happiness, which (they try to assure the children) is sometimes, in some places, still stocked. The children, pinched with hunger but drifting off, are soothed by mothers’ voices and the touching trust that parents always know what needs to be known and always tell the truth.