BOOKS

“Great poets teach us to see in words, moments, actions, emotions, and Elaine Sexton does this so vividly and visually that the reader, this reader, is there, with her on her Drive. Continually inventive, often startling, the poems in this beautiful collection are a gift for writers, artists, and anyone who loves language.”

– Jonathan Santlofer, author of The Last Mona Lisa and The Widower’s Notebook

“In this dazzling collection, Elaine Sexton brings a life lived in poetry to a startling new premise: acceleration equals exhilaration. These poems make me long to be on the road in America, foot on the pedal and heart in the wind.”   

– Jeet Thayil, author of Names of the Women and The Book of Chocolate Saints

Published by Grid Books | April 2022
ISBN: 978-1-946830-14-2

“In her smart manifesto ‘Poetry & Smoke,’ the author proclaims ‘I’m for a poetry that makes order from disorder. And sometimes takes it back.’ What she takes it back to, aside from the faceted self, is a kind of nakedness where the self is freed from the clichés of gender and beauty and a truer more vulnerable human being comes forward. Prospect/Refuge is an insightful, well-crafted book and puts Elaine Sexton among the best poets writing today.” 

– Roger Mitchell

Published by Sheep Meadow Press | October 2015
ISBN: 978-1-937679-53-8

“In their plainspoken engagement with the actual world Elaine Sexton’s poems are models of scrupulous attention, alert to the simple truth that everything is ‘part of some bigger mystery’ so even a fish can sing a ‘psalm,’ a simple shoe be the subject of one. The poems in this impressive second collection contain the sound of a consciousness meditating on what is passing in the world and abiding in the heart and mind. Elegy without sentimentality …. the poems of Causeway are always informed by a honest buoyancy of spirit that can mix ‘the scent of lilacs’ with ‘smokers’ coughs,’ as imagination testifies to the hard-won realization that ‘Even in these/toxic times, we live, we thrive.’”

– Eamon Grennan

Published by New Issues Press | April 2008
ISBN: 978-1-930974-77-7

“Elaine Sexton’s poetry is furious and unstoppable—and it is all the more so because it insinuates itself into our consciousness with such love and exquisite tenderness. Underneath that tenderness, though, is a relentless will to forego the inessential, to take the measure of the real, to uncover the secret and silent engines of our human grief.”

– Vijay Seshadri

“Elaine Sexton knows how to raise autobiography to the level of true poetry, and this knack has much to do with her use of surprise. Just when we think we know where one of her poems is going, we step into air. Sleuth leads us carefully into her life through a series of bracing verbal delights.”  

– Billy Collins

Published by New Issues Press | April 2003
ISBN: 978-1-930974-29-6