Blue Mistaken for Sky

Andrea Hollander, Autumn House Press (SEPTEMBER) Softcover $17.95 (96pp) 978-1-938769-33-7

When a poem causes you a wince of discomfort, chances are that it’s the poet who let down her defenses and revealed a psychic wound. Such vulnerability is powerful. You feel for the poet, and such feelings are what make us best as humans. But don’t overdo it, poet, because that well of empathy can quickly run dry. In sharing the heartache of her divorce, Andrea Hollander does humanity a service. She is the author of four other collections of poetry and the recipient of many prestigious prizes.

636 LYONS AVENUE, APARTMENT 1A

My grandparents chewed with their mouths open. I knew better than to mention it. My mother, who’d grown up in that apartment, would not have approved and would have given me one of her knowing looks. Stripped of hope this time that she’d ever leave the hospital, I’d come to eat with them, these two who that evening knew themselves only as her parents but seemed more like children learning for the first time appropriate behavior as they sat at the Formica table, paper napkins on their laps, the meat on their plates cut into tiny digestible pieces.