The Future? Keeps Being Happy! A new review in American Book Review

May 30, 2012 update.  The review in now available, with permission of the author, on My 3,000 Loving Arms at A Poet Who Doesn't Suck (May 30, 2012).

Being my mother's daughter, boasting—she don't come easy. I anticipate Mom will express regret over so much enforced humility when I meet up with her in Yonville, The Beyond So Great, The Mysterious Phase Next of Existence.

(And I would love to meet up with her. I miss my mother.)

Let's get back on message.  American Book Review, a print journal (print: archaic term, wiki it), published a review of my poetry collection, The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX).

The beautifully written review begins with a beautifully written manifesto of contemporary poetics, then offers insight to the specific of my work, in light of the sardonic, tongue-in-cheek and brave manifesto.

Melissa Studdard is reviewer.  She is also a poet and fiction writer.  Pulled quote:

And so, despite what might have initially sounded like a complaint about contemporary poetry, I’m here to tell you that there is still much good poetry being written, and there are still many good collections coming out. One such collection is The Future is Happy, by Sarah Sarai, published by BlazeVox Books, a press that proclaims to publish “poetry that doesn’t suck.” In Sarai’s case, I wholeheartedly agree. It doesn’t suck at all. It is, in fact, a poetry of luminous, brave transparency, and though it would by no means be considered confessional, it lays bare the unique mechanisms of Sarai’s mind, the wild fluctuations of her pulse, skipped beats of her heart. Sarai has no qualms about mentioning weed, chili peppers, the bible and the afterlife all in the same poem, and her wacky, unique perceptions of the world spawn metaphor after metaphor, analogy after analogy of sparkling, lyrical, hilarious insight. Crossing the border is compared to crossing into the afterlife, Emily Dickinson is presented as a Jew
in hiding, and poop cleaned from a baby’s butt is likened to sin wiped away by grace. What may appear at first to be flippant always has a deeper meaning, and the mundane is frequently combined with the sacred.

More information about American Book Review at http://americanbookreview.org/issueContent.asp?id=193. The review is in the Jan/Feb 2011 issue.