Making a Clean Space in the Sky

Making a Clean Space in the Sky by Paula Yup


Paula  Yup  is  a  poet  of  vision  and  reflection  whose  verse  is accessible  and  quietly  profound.  The  poems  in  Making  a Clean Space  in  the  Sky cast  a  collective  spell  and  illuminate  life,  love, and loss. — Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed  
 
These are quotidian poems out of an exotic locale to most of us, Majuro, The Republic of the Marshall Islands.  Though “as easy as prose,” as Robert Lowell said of his last collection of poems, like his they arrest, linger in memory as Paula Yup writes a “waterfall of words/which I must drink.”  — Parker Towle, author of Weather Is No Womb 
 
In Making  a  Clean  Space  in  the  Sky,  Paula  Yup  immerses  her readers  powerfully  in  a  personal  past  scarred  by  abuse  and  self doubt.   But  through  these  revelations  of  pain  also  come   a 
forgiveness  and  a  tenderness,  an  embracing  of  the  self  and  the other.   Sometimes  using  an  innovative  syntax,  sometimes  just telling  it  like  it  is,  but  with  a  subtlety,  craft  and  control  that 
captivates you, she reveals many levels of awareness at once. — Rustin Larson, author of Crazy Star and The Wine-Dark House 
 
Paula  Yup’s  poetry  is  full  of  vivid  scenes  and  strong  emotion, tempered  with  a  unique  sense  of  humor  that  softens  the  hurt  of 
being human. Even though she now feels the exile of Pacific island life,  her  past  years  in  diverse  cultures—-Phoenix,  Tokyo,  Woods Hole,  Spokane—make  her  sharp  eyes  focus  clearly.   —  Elinor Benedict, author of All That Divides Us and Late News from the Wilderness