She Has Visions
poems by Carla Sarett
This engaging poetic calendar has one item for
each week of the year, fifty-one lyrical instances
and a poignant preface. What obtains above all in
these expressions of being-in-the-world is
womanhood, in first and third persons, from girls
and mothers to cosmopolitan travelers and
grandmothers. Sentiment and intellect are
balanced, as are statement and ellipsis. Absence
and incompleteness complement presence and
plenitude. Discovering images to make sense of
the fragility of things and inexorable time.
Charles A. Perrone
Acute, fresh, potent, poems laced with
imagination lighting images suffuse Sarett's
elegantly crafted, quietly rendered, compendium
of visions. This masterly poet expresses with rare
presence the questions, aperçus, and memory
entwined conversations that uncomfortably trail
loss. If you are amidst the perplexities of later life
to which fine poetry speaks best, you will whisper
silent thanks.
Marc Zegans, Author of The Snow Dead and The Underwater Typewriter
She Has Visions is a romp, a risk and a ride
through life, in which the sharp edges of everyday
bump up against old standbys-art, history, film,
literature and religion-that can no longer
comfort us as we had hoped. The way that Carla
Sarett deals with this disappointment is to
sprinkle dashes of magical realism here and there
in her fascinating poems.
Patricia Gray, author of Rupture: poems
Patricia Gray, author of Rupture: poems and former director of the Poetry and Literature Center, LOC