[m]ar[y]

In America many elderly people are made invisible, but the poems in D. Walsh Gilbert's collection bring one such individual vividly into focus. In poems such as "Mary's Disorderly Conduct," "Mary Opens the Window," and "Mary Faces Firebrand and Ember," we see Mary as vulnerable, stubborn, vivacious-uniquely herself. In "Mary Receives Treatment," she refuses to look at her wound or at the doctor. "Not-looking is an absence / which has held her together before." But the poet looks, and sees, and gives us insight into a woman who once lived an independent, exciting life in New York City, but now must find her way toward acceptance of a life lived, as one poem suggests, "in little rooms."

-Ginny Lowe Connors, author of Without Goodbyes: from Puritan Deerfield to Mohawk Kahnawake



Poets are taught to notice and appreciate small things, forgotten and overlooked and invisible things. In D. Walsh Gilbert's [M]AR[Y], those things-Easter roses, antique mirrors, a room key-add up to the journey the poet's Aunt Mary takes from old age to assisted living, an entirely other province of life where things are often replaced by memories and the silence of waiting. But [M]AR[Y], with its astonishingly lovely phrasing and love of language, is also a gift from niece to aunt which, everybody hopes, will last a very long time indeed.

-John Surowiecki, author of Chez Pétrouchka



"Don't we all just live in a world // reaching for things?" asks D. Walsh Gilbert early in her poignant and powerful collection of poems about her Aunt Mary. Through exquisitely insightful metaphors and stunning images, Gilbert explores the losses suffered by her aunt, and by extension all of us, as she ages, moving from "independence to bruised // squirrel on the roadway alone." With enormous skill and attention to detail, Gilbert shows Mary's courage and resilience. This moving book is about the reality of what we will all face, and Gilbert's fearless honesty and unflinching eye illuminate each line, as she offers us the gift of truth about life and loss.

-Edwina Trentham, author of Stumbling into the Light