That Strapless Bra in Heaven

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 Wisdom

If 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.