As the curtain rises, a mother feeds her children Wheaties, but inside her there is turmoil: What do you wear on the day a doctor's verdict might destroy your life? Hang onto your hats, folks, because that's only Act I of A Thousand Tiny Sorrows, the latest collection by Carol Lynn Grellas. From the unbearable pain of a mother's death—which Grellas describes with the powerful poignancy for which she is known—to the glorious insight that “every happiness arrives without warning and turns to joy when the beauty of nothingness becomes profound,” you'll find yourself with wet eyes and choked-up throat, and hopefully, like Grellas, “grateful for the ache.” Bravo! --Boston Literary Magazine Grellas confronts illness and death, delivering a collection of elegantly crafted and lyrical poems that ferret out moments of shining joy hidden in the depths of sorrow. Highly recommended. --Carla Martin-Wood, author of The Last Magick (Pudding House, 2009) and Flight Risk (Fortunate Childe, 2010) “Because today is not extraordinary” (“Measuring the Empty”), Grellas embraces that sense of the commonplace as her starting point. The diction of The Waiting Room is direct and honest as the speaker anxiously prepares to hear results of a significant medical test. From nursing home to nail salon, we are presented with settings that are immediately accessible. With Grellas as guide, we explore a landscape of emotional experience that has been her familiar territory and now becomes ours. With a deft hand, she evokes love, grief, terror, ecstasy, and those thousand sorrows that shadow us all. In Broken Stalk, the speaker hides “within an inner world all glistening like the brightest cherry…” --Brenda Levy Tate, from the Foreword
Epistemology of an Odd Girl by Carol Lynn Grellas celebrates what it's like to be a woman on every level, from our most basic instinct to nurture, to our exalted ability to receive wisdom from tragedy. Mothers, wives, lovers, sisters, best friends--we are all goddesses, and rather than focus on our shortcomings, we deserve to "embrace all that we aren't, until we're in awe of ourselves." Superbly written, with tenderness and compassion on every page. --Robin Stratton, Boston Literary Review
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