Susan Lembo Balik

Sinatra, the Jeeperettes & Me Susan Lembo Balik

"Rooted in narrative," this collection of 71 poems launches "an evocative journey" back through "Depression-era Paterson, New Jersey, that city so connected with poetry in literary history." It offers "a kaleidoscope of images" from the past: her parents dancing to Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey Band, "an image captured as though in a glass globe that glows in the light of her father?s memories," and "the poet?s mother . . . perpetually caught in the glamor of 1930?s movies," combine with Balik's "love for her husband, their early courtship and marriage, their children, the daily rituals of life, compassion for animals and love of nature," a "desire to prevent animal cruelty, the protest marches against such cruelty to which she takes her children, her concern for the environment." (from the introduction by American Book Award-winning poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan)