Visible Heavens

"There are poems which carry us clean away, transporting us into worlds as specific as the pink purse the author of Visible Heavens helps a little boy buy for his teacher, Miss Stone. Melancholy and loss, the missing of a gone mother, passion and solitude---stirringly well mixed in one potent brew of a book. Readers will feel at home here, but they'll also feel ignited with new presences, keenly visible and invisible perceptions---`It is a gift, this light we carry in our lungs....' Cheers to Joanna Solfrian for a fine first book, the stunning deep breath of her voice."--- Naomi Shihab Nye

"Visible Heavens is a `measure of wonder' where the unadorned materials of language and life, of frailty, music, and mortality, propose to us profound beauties. Stitched with the silver thread of longing through hauntings and meditative clarities, Joanna Solfrian's poems are bracingly restrained, nimble and vivid, informed by earth, lifted by sky."---Dean Young

"The exactitude of emotion that courses through these poems is quietly breath-taking. Continually and without fuss, Joanna Solfrian finds metaphors that go to the heart of many perplexed matters. These talents speak for her ability not only to express what is forgotten or merely ignored but what seeks the special grace of language. The experience is haunting; the poems are sturdy."---Baron Wormser

"If you have ever loved and grieved, you will find yourself in these poems. Elegant, spare, and evocative, they capture the essence of both loss and resilience."---Olivia Gentile, author of Life List: A Woman's Quest for the World's Most Amazing Birds