And isn't the story of our lives the story of our women, the mythology we have lived and been bequeathed? Anna Mae Perillo's INHERITANCE OF COURAGE AND FEAR speaks, sings through memory and desire. Duality is here in these poems, excavated and resolved. She asks, what are we if not the humble and fierce products of some other country within our own? And what of the tension that lies in the answer, which is the reason for who we are and what we do, and, most importantly, what we leave in our wake. This collection is a beautiful remembrance and conjuring of what passes through us, and what brings us to our political and intimate moments, as alive as it is elegiac. Remember, it whispers, and we do.
-VANESSA JIMENEZ GABB, author of Images for Radical Politics, Midnight Blue and Weekend Poems.
If you think of a chapbook as a small book, you're going to have to adjust your judgement here. Anna Mae Perillo has sculpted a book that never remains personal because she introduces the individuals in her poems and then the reader to their connection with a much bigger world. Enter here and see how big a chapbook can get.
-FRAN QUINN, author of A Horse of Blue Ink, co-author of Sound Ideas and the recipient of the 2019 Stanley Kunitz Prize.
Anna Mae Perillo has created a "beautiful nest" of family and friends engaging each other and the world, celebrating victories, sharing worries. Her essential nature is to bloom: "To claw up through the dense soil/ To meet the sun," being present in each moment.
-MYRA SHAPIRO, author of 12 Floors Above the Earth, I'll See you Thursday, and Four Sublets. Her poem "These are the Pearls" appeared in the New Yorker, July, 2019. She serves on the Board of Directors of Poets House.
