BRIGHT-EYED: The new poetry collection from Sarah Sarai & Poets Wear Prada

BRIGHT-EYED is now available on Amazon. 

from the back cover: 

Bright-Eyed, Sarah Sarai’s deliciously quirky excursion into her California roots, explores the concept of family and the racial and gender divides that can obscure the basic truths of existence. Danced out into the sun-bleached So Cal heat, these poems dazzle. As the poet says in “Wasted in a Special Way,” It is always good to be young and loaded./Something, somewhere is always good./Something somewhere is always wasted. These poems are terrific. Nothing wasted. Nothing at all. 

 —Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of EROTIC: New & Selected

With Sarah Sarai’s Bright-Eyed, I’m reminded of the Miles Davis idea that music’s not the notes but the attitude of s/he who blows the notes, and Bright Eyes is filled with attitude. It’s a joy-ride through the old neighborhood informed by a vital wit that ranges from Sun Ra to Nietzsche and drops aphorisms the way Hansel and Gretel dropped crumbs – the past doesn’t haunt you/you haunt the past; youth is a superpower; To have a self:/That’s an art; and on and on – reminding us, if we need reminding, that you can’t go home again, but you do anyway.

—Tim Tomlinson, author of This Is Not Happening to You; co-founder, New York Writers’ Workshop

Order here: https://amzn.to/3PM90bH 

BRIGHT-EYED is published by Poets Wear Prada, a press founded in Hoboken and specializing in beautiful paperback books. Roxanne Hoffman is founder and editor-in-chief. Jack Cooper is editor.

About BRIGHT-EYED: These poems reflect this native New Yorker’s family's move to California; growing up on the West Coast—the San Fernando Valley, the Crenshaw District, Echo Park, in the 1960s and 19670s as a preteen, teen, and soon an adult; and her responses to her new surroundings and the times. Several poems explore interracial tension and coexistence from the viewpoint of a young person whose older sister created an interracial family. The poet explores her relationships with her nephew, niece, their children, and her brother-in-law from the perspectives of both family and race. Her insight and wit are reminiscent of the California poet Diane Wakowski and James Broughton.

 

poems that dance on a faultline... @Mistress_Tweet on #That Strapless Bra in Heaven ...Mary Meriam-reviews #poems

That Strapless Bra in Heaven on Amazon. 

Thank you, Mary, although I'm really not erudite. I simply remember

books I read in college. Sarah 

 Mary Meriam

 5.0 out of 5 stars

 dazzling, intellectual, brave

 Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2020

 Mary Meriam

 5.0 out of 5 stars dazzling, intellectual, brave

 Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2020

Sarah Sarai throws her balls of erudition in the air and juggles them into poems that dance on a faultline between frolic and rage. What does “that strapless bra in heaven” represent? It’s a subversive, underwire, feminist image: breasts free of straps, comfortably supported, floating like angels. It’s also a lesbian image: a symbol of 

pink and lacy bliss. “Who wouldn’t want to spend millennia  / in a fine female breast?” Sarai asks queer questions and answers them in a dazzling milieu of her own creation. No one writes like Sarah Sarai.

Like That Strapless Bra! @ https://www.facebook.com/thatstraplessbra/ #poems #poetrycollection

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That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books) is Sarah Sarai's third book and second full-length poetry collection. Click on the link to order. $14! 

The Facebook page includes:

• A complete list of poem titles!
• Comments, as they come in, from reviewers!
• An exciting guide on how to order your very own a copy of THAT STRAPLESS BRA IN HEAVEN!
• With links! and price breakdown! ($14 +shipping)!
• Welcome to the blurbs!

Poems in Strapless were first published in Prelude, Boston Review, Posit, Ethel, Barrow Street, Zocalo Public Square, Oddball, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, Quiddity, Isacoustic, SWWiM, and many other fine journals.

"this poet is tuned in to the idiosyncratic and has something to say about it" - review of Strapless

Susan Tepper wrote a delightful Amazon review of That Strapless Bra in Heaven & here it is, in full: Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2020:

Poet Sarah Sarai knows how to make a line zing, grab your attention, shock you a little or a lot, and make you laugh. All in one stanza. That is no small feat. This poet is very tuned in to the idiosyncratic and has something to say about it. Actually, a lot to say. "My mood is London longing for a blue sky. I take the Hudson River as my lover, / the Southwest as my comforter, Mount Shasta as my tomb. Who wouldn’t want to spend millennia in a fine female breast? …” from her book THAT STRAPLESS BRA IN HEAVEN where life IS a train wreck. But Sarai gets past all that with other train wrecks, from other lives, from history, near and far, from myths and legends, from the wake-up call of a weary friend: “One morning he pulled me aside, to advise I never check myself into Bellevue.” This is poetry on acid with a twist of real. You have to be wide open to rap lines the way Sarai does. The book is lyrical, musical, unforgiving. I’m not suggesting this poet is heartless. Not by any stretch. She just keeps the soft and mushy under wraps, giving us a peek, here and there. Because she’s an original. Very highly recommended.

The Amazon path to That Strapless Bra in Heaven, poems by Sarah Sarai.

Or go to Kelsay Books to order your copy of That Strapless Bra in Heaven, 

poems by Sarah Sarai.

Susan Tepper is author of, most recently, the novel 

What Drives Men (Wilderness House).

photo: The East River. Taken by Sarah Sarai.