The Sky Is Great

The Sky Is Great, the Sky Is Blue

Sharon Chmielarz

Sharon Chmielarz’s fifth collection poetry is a cornucopia of small, lyric poems on various topics, encompassing Chopin and Pushkin, dolphins and cows, zippers and gourds, bar scenes and garden scenes.

For the eye loves the beautiful
martyrdom of sheer barrenness,
fallen from a dream’s caution.
(“Tree Shadow”)

These are astonishing poems. Like Szymborska’s, the poems are spare, often subversive, both dark and hopeful: a conscience is at work in them. Like Dickinson’s, they breathe. It’s true— the best poems, like Chmielarz’s, arise when a wary intelligence trusts instinct, however briefly, and when a warm heart confronts its solitude.

— Connie Wanek, author of On Speaking Terms

In The Sky Is Great, The Sky Is Blue, Sharon Chmielarz is singularly herself with her sharp eye, her quick ear, and her knowledge that “one becomes full by merely remembering.”

— Tim Nolan, author of The Sound of It

For many of us who have followed Chmielarz’s work, the short poems come as a surprise and stand with her longer pieces ... as a tribute to her virtuosity.

— Roseann Lloyd, author of Because of the Light

ISBN 978-098293350-3 $12 US Includes free shipping!


		Sharon Chmielarz is the author of four previous collections of poetry: Different Arrangements, But I Won't Go Out in a Boat, The Other Mozart (made recently into a two-part opera) and The Rhubarb King. She's had poems published in magazines like The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Hudson Review, The North American Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Commonweal and Salmagundi. She's also written for children.
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