Sarah Sarai's Geographies of Soul and Taffeta takes place in a universe where the real and the unreal meet each other in a careful, ecstatic dance, where words melt into their partners and opposites, and Yin and Yang swirl together like the best kind of soft serve ice cream. The ideas and images here are exact, surprising, and often humorous: in fact, Sarai's poems strike new ground in being intelligent and far reaching while maintaining an air of humility and matter of factness. --Christine Hamm The poems in Sarah Sarai's Geographies of Soul and Taffeta are little transgressions, butterflies a-wing. They present a poetry of surprise. Don't expect candy (though there might be some); don't expect demons (even the ones who live there). Dive in, world-hunter, dream-needer. Let Sarai's vision and images wing you to your next place, fiercely reflective and very much alive. --Richard Loranger Sarah Sarai's Geographies of Soul and Taffeta is a strong and beautiful sequence of poems. What haunts me most has to do with the emotional acuity and authority, how the poems' subjectivities are rendered essential. The generosity, the word play and re-play, the variations, the real world and its perpetual redemptions, the imagination's power not to transform exactly, but to reveal, which is transforming--all make Sarai's new collection a rewarding and an astonishing read. --Debora Lidov Sarah Sarai was born in Port Washington, grew up in California, and lives in New York. A former English teacher and college professor, she is now an editor and researcher. She has an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Collections include The Future Is Happy, I Feel Good, Emily Dickinson's Coconut Face, O You of the Cotton Pajamas, and The Risen Barbie. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies.

Geographies of Soul and Taffeta

Literature & Fiction

Sarai, Sarah

Poetry

Indolent Books

That Strapless Bra holds up Sarah Sarai as a keen observer of the world. With wit and sardonic reflections, Sarai brings poems that fuel a long ride.Julie R. Enszer, author of Avowed, Lilith's Demons, Sisterhood, and editor of Sinister WisdomIf it is to be of any value / a story will be misunderstood" - that's Sarah Sarai in That Strapless Bra in Heaven. A visionary who can't quite keep a straight face, a prophet quicker to laughter than judgment, Sarai is a virtuoso of the one-liner - "too much is as it seems" - but she works with a vast cultural canvas, and sorrow and a thirst for the real underlie, the scintillating eloquence. Dante's journey is a dream, Stalin's famine never ends, Dido weeps in the city she built, humans wander through a world of staggering beauty never quite knowing how to love each other: "What do monkeys worry about? / Our imaginations grown dim?" The Strapless Bra in Heaven is a roller coaster, but it's grounded in what we once called wisdom. Sarai's new book is a thrilling read. D. Nurkse, author of Love in the Last Days: After Tristan and Iseult; The Border Kingdom; The Fall "light... in the unnavigable dead end" / these poems are as truthful as Sarah herself & a bit surreal / they are both weighty & cunning // unmask gender / benders / dilemmas & tyrants / nasty politics & social disgrace in all areas & eras often merging them while encompassing & compressing the personal & objective past & future with the present. "You dreamed you were a prophet... You awoke an anarchist... ready to kill" / Sarah sorts out socio-political angst / trickery & self-righteous humanism / while tackling that "mountain pass from child / hood to the freeing squalor..." "Reader, if you were seam... I'd take you out anywhere..." / "you are the first line of this poem... this poem exists for you..." / "you're not dead you're middle aged..." / "I say good riddance... though I'll miss myself..." these poems reveal, as Sarah puts it, "the artist's confidence to create celestial buoyancy..." / wake up, sleeper. at times biblical / never preachy. read them & weep / laugh / ponder. i wish you more than luck, Sarah. i wish you much success.Steve Dalachinsky is author of where night and day become one: the french poems, 1983 - 2017. He received a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2014.

That Strapless Bra in Heaven

Kelsay Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sarai, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Sarai, Sarah

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Sarai, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Geographies of Soul and Taffeta

That Strapless Bra in Heaven