Light Entering My Bones - Albiso, Sally

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Résumé :
I knew the story already, but I rushed through part one, as if it were a who-dun-it, waiting as Albiso in her well-chosen words and poignant images tracks the elusive tumor and its hopeful demise. I knew the outcome already, but, facing her death, Albiso gracefully turns not to what will happen, but to every direction the soul travels as it lives and contemplates. In heightened language, she explores angels and birds, trees and light, Judaism and flight, letting each beloved experience count. The last poem reflects on lines from Neruda to lift us finally into 'a radiance that can't be subdued.' ~ Alice Derry, author of Hunger What is it we expect from death? Sally Albiso asks in her poem After the Neighbor's Dog Dies. In her final book, Light Entering My Bones, she chronicles the process of dying, the pain of cancer treatment, and how to inhabit a body she knows will not survive...What time she has left, she measures by the rhythms of the natural world, as if this is the only way she can inhabit a body that has turned against her: 'I cough up feathers/ and dream of singing/light entering my bones.'...The poems in the book never descend to self-pity, but rather find compassion for her husband, the one who will be left behind...At their core, these are love poems... Brave, articulate, with a sharp curiosity, these poems take us step by step through a journey we know will be our own. At times painful to read, you will emerge from the spell of this book with a renewed appreciation and compassion for your own brief life. ~ Karen Whalley, author of My Own Name Seems Strange to Me

Biographie:
Sally Albiso earned a BA in Spanish from UCLA and an MA in English with a creative writing emphasis from San Diego State University. While at SDSU, she studied with the poets Glover Davis and Carolyn Forch? and completed a thesis of her own poetry. After receiving her master's degree, she taught English composition, creative writing, and English as a Second Language at Chapman College, San Diego State University Extension, and Southwestern College. In 2003, Albiso and her husband moved from California to the North Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, where she returned to writing poetry. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and received the Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize, The Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award, the Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award, and the Camber Press Chapbook Award for her chapbook Newsworthy. Another chapbook, The Notion of Wings, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2015. Her poems have appeared in Blood Orange Review, Crab Creek Review, Floating Bridge Review, Poetica, Pontoon: an anthology of Washington State poets, Rattle, The Comstock Review and other publications.