Disappearing Act

Poetry. The poems in DISAPPEARING ACT, Saundra Maley's first collection of poetry, often have a meditative aura about them. Delicate in tone and spare in form, they evoke a sense of wonderment, whether her subjects are historical personages—from Moses and King Tutankhaman, to Thomas Jefferson and Walt Whitman—or family memories, or passing occurrences that we hardly stop to notice. For example, "A Small Green Leaf," the title of which serves as the opening line: "Uninvited — / Falls / Into the palm of my hand // I ask its name / I hear / Grief." Maley's work eschews elaborate tropes in exploring the poetic capacity of ordinary speech and silence to convey what the poems discover in her acts of contemplation.