Poet Catherine Arra has announced the publication of her poetry collection, Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues from Kelsay Books. She is the author of seven poetry collections and was the featured reader at the Third Thursday Poetry Night at the Social Justice Center in Albany, NY, in June 2022.
One of the finely etched archetypes in “The Tarot Poems” section of Catherine Arra’s Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues must have thrown the deck and always come up with life. The book is rife with it: a life that both stares down and embraces the dark times, while coaxing everything radiant to the surface. In “Cooking in the Time of Corona,” she and her “witches in the wisdom of friendship” make Covid palatable. And God help “Badass,” “a real pussy magnet,” who whines enough to “send any good orgasm packing.”
—Tina Barry, author of Beautiful Raft and Mall Flower
Catherine Arra is a former high school English and writing teacher. Since leaving the classroom in 2012, her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous literary journals online and in print, and in several anthologies. She is the author of Solitude, Tarot & the Corona Blues (Kelsay Books, 2022), Deer Love (Dos Madres Press, 2021), Her Landscape, Poems Based on the Life of Mileva Marić Einstein (Finishing Line Press, 2020), (Women in Parentheses) (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2019), Writing in the Ether (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and three earlier chapbooks, Tales of Intrigue & Plumage (FutureCycle Press, 2017), Loving from the Backbone (Flutter Press, 2015), and Slamming & Splitting (Red Ochre Press, 2014). A Pushcart nominee, Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups.
In pared-down pandemic life, a time for walking, reflecting, and days sustained by nature and a woman’s fortitude, Catherine Arra finds “Second Seasons.” She writes, “In distilled grace, let us plant a garden for / regret, sorrow, forgiveness, tend the past in beginnings.” By turns folksy, lyrical, caustic, and determined, her poems speak with a toughened wisdom that won’t suffer fools but knows the truth of love. Her tarot poems offer a master class in persona poetry. Each speaks with a spiky personality to deliver truths that are entertaining, painful, but never wrong. A smart and heartful book.
—Will Nixon, author of My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and The Pocket Guide to Woodstock
For more information on the book and to order your copy, go to KelsayBooks.com or Amazon.com
