Faraway Confections

In Faraway Confections, Nina Romano evokes memories that are time and world travelers, spanning a life that took her from America to Italy, France, Spain, and beyond. Lush in exotic imagery, recollection ignites the senses, recreating the flavor and flowering of place and self. These elegant poems are a love letter to her past, and at the heart, a consecration of her marriage. Addressing her husband Felipe, as many of the poems do, she admits, “We’ve tread the razor’s edge/ of love and hate/ rapture, rupture and despair….” Yet by the close of the collection, time comes round to the beginning: “Our lives/ fading stars at dawn, are dwindling,/ yet here I am once more/ mid-winter mad/ in love with you.” This new collection is a stunning memorial to what has passed and what still endures.
~~Jane Ellen Glasser: The Red Coat, Light Persists, Naming the Darkness
Nina Romano’s poems make your mouth water with anticipation as you can literally taste her words, the olive oil rich and oily on your tongue. She not only draws you into her gastronomy, but she titillates your senses with finely drawn landscapes, human interaction, and an appreciation for that which we cannot control, nature at its most mysterious. To read Faraway Confections is to give in, luxuriously and without guilt, to your most basic of needs: your sweet tooth, ultimately coming to the same conclusion: moving on is something we do: inevitably, and with grace.
~~Barbra Nightingale: Geometry of Dreams, Two Voices, Lunar Equations