Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada) 2024: Reviews keep happening

Poets, friends, the curious, the adventurous. . . Each reviewer of Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada/2024) offers a fresh perspective on my poems ... which journey from the East Coast to the West Coast (Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, the Crenshaw District, Echo Park, Malibu, up to San Francisco and Seattle). These poems explore that famously tricky topic of family, as well as race, friendship, a sense of place. All are beautiful. Feel free to comment here or on Amazon.

The reviews. . .

Rain Taxi. REVIEW by Jim Feast: The link is to an Instagram post.

The Writing Disorder. REVIEW by Ed Go

MER/Mom Egg Review. REVIEW by Jordan E. Franklin. 

Compulsive Reader. REVIEW by Charles Rammelkamp

Tears in the Fence. REVIEW by John Brantingham

Necromancy Never Pays. REVIEW by Jeanne Griggs & from Michael T. Young: "It is a deft collection that brings us along seamlessly in learning the art of having a self and should find a place on any poetry-lover’s shelf."

Thanks to Roxanne Hoffman and Jack Cooper of

 Poets Wear Prada (Hoboken, New Jersey and Paris, France).

Various incarnations of Sarah Sarai. Stay tuned. We update monthly, or hope to:

Sarah Sarai, 2024:

Sarah Sarai, 2010, or so.  

Sarah Sarai, 2023, with Stacy's Daughter, in L.A.

PurCHasE from the seller of your choice, including: Amazon  Bookshop 

Also by Sarah Sarai:

The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX/2009)

Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books/2016)

That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books/2019)

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.