Waiting for Achilles

In her stunning new book of visionary poems, Waiting For Achilles, the poet, Jo Sarzotti, intimately explores those caught moments of our deepest, pained humanness-irretrievable loss, existential terror, the forever unforgivable-and, too, those ecstatic encounters with beauty and releases of joy that take our breath away.

-Emily Fragos

Sarzotti uses language to say all that is beautiful is not pretty: Sometimes it’s terrifying. We open every book we read with a certain amount of expectancy. We know it will be a settling of accounts, a construction of some vitality; however, it’s rare to be touched every second by the raw uncompromising psyche and therefore it’s impossible not to listen to this writer.

-Grace Cavalieri

As if cut through, cut with, the edge of a blade, these poems excavate for beauty, unbury for pain and present the condensed essence of both (“So much pain/such a small shadow on the bone”). Ancient feuds, flawed gods and humans, a personal mythology of horse (“His deep animal eye/holds a part of me/I won’t get back”)-all enact a violent concision, an exactitude, line by line, image by image, swerve by swerve. This is a book of strife and shiver and transformation-thrilling to read and a joy to contemplate.

-Joan Houlihan