Between Silence And Praise

The threshold of what is about to happen or has just passed, the liminal moment- these are the subjects of the poems in this volume. As if the lift in the breath and the skipped heartbeat can be caught in words, as if the shadow were known as fully as the person who casts it. Anticipation is as important as accomplishment. There is attention to what often goes unseen, as when great wild cats pause before the pounce. Life seems larger and more luminous with these spaces filled in. The poems suggest that if we saw more and praised it, we might envy our own lives.

"Elizabeth Socolow's poetry is at once graceful, powerful and provocative. She captures above all those flashes of consciousness, replete with evanescent meaning, that elude less refined perceptions. In this, she reminds me of Robert Browning's fascination with the 'moment one and infinite.' She celebrates the unnoticed small perfections of the natural world, like the spores of the fern, and links them to large questions of connectedness and complexity."
-Evelyn Witkin, Geneticist, Director-at-Large, New York Browning Society.

"Borrowing from ecstatic tradition, Elizabeth Socolow turns rapt attention to what lies 'between'-to the hidden spaces one seeks for safety, to solitudes and the tensile strengths that bind us. Her lovely, devotional reflections make repair of aging, loss and loneliness and show us many ways 'to love the days and be surprised.'"
-Terry Blackhawk, author of Body & Field and Escape Artist, Director of the Detroit Inside/Out Project of Poetry in the Schools