Mary Cuffe Perez has a brand-new collection of poetry – Poetry in November – available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press.
In Poems in November, Mary Cuffe Perez writes, “Leafless,/trees lean into silence./This is what they are here for,/not to say what the wind will have them say/but to listen .…” Likewise, this poet leans into the silence and severe beauty of a family farm, her task to listen and to see. Here are “Apples red as ardency,/tasting of birch buds and ginger.” But here, too, is life beyond the senses, for these are poems filled with the life of the mind. The poet marvels, “It could be March as easily as November./A cup half filled.” Readers will drink deeply from this entrancing collection.
—Suzanne Cleary, author of four poetry collections, and national award winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Cecil Hemley memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, among many others.
Mary Perez has created a carefully etched picture of a family farm slowly falling apart and the lives of the people who occupy it. Her observations are sharp, accurate, convincing. These poems, like November, are in shades of grey, sparse, powerful and sticking in the mind when you put the book down.
–Marge Piercy, author of 17 novels including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; the National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women as well as 19 volumes of poetry and a critically acclaimed memoir, Sleeping with Cats.
Mary Cuffe Perez, Galway, New York, is the author of Nothing by Name and The Woman of Too Many Days (poetry books) a children’s novel, Skylar and, most recently Barn Stories, which won the 2018 Adirondack Writing Center’s Award for Best Memoir. She has written articles for Adirondack Life, Yankee, Northern Woodlands and other magazines and has published poetry and fiction in several literary venues.
