Sirs & Madams

In Sirs & Madams, Joanna C Valente shows us that she is an adroit navigator of the human condition and knows the nooks and crannies of heartmeats and the grey and fluid nature of brainmeats. Let her take your hand. You'll be all the better for it. -Sean Doyle, author of This Must Be the Place Death and the promise of death. What more could you want in a poetry collection? Life? Why yes, that's in here too. It's swimming through every word ripping out our hearts and putting something else there that beats just as nice. I like that. Joanna Valente's first collection, Sirs & Madams, is filled with that. I often find it difficult weaving narrative and poem, but Valente does it with spectacular results. These poems echo a John Berryman "Dreamsong" mashed with Maggie Nelson's "Jane: A Murder Mystery." In other words, yes. "She says she loves men who are dead, they are the men who love the most," "Five paragraphs, one tank gasoline, loneliness greater than the sum of your parts," and "You tell her she should become a silent film star, that her eyes are singing" are just some of the dynamic lines in this book. It's in your hands, don't miss out on the promise of reading it.
-Thomas Fucaloro, author of It Starts from the Belly and Blooms and Mistakes Disguised as Stars
Valente's SIRS & MADAMS is rendered with stylistic and syntactical panache and courage. It is moving, mournful and musical. It is beautiful and bereft. Valente is a great writing talent who awaits wider recognition.
-Seamus Scanlon, author of As Close As You'll Ever Be
In Sirs & Madams, tones of birth and death compel deftly-drawn characters whose "veins are everywhere." On the surface, a tight form takes hold: Valente has real command over her structure and voice. But underneath, the nuance blooms; the poems are at once gritty, feminine, natural and morose. This book needs to tell its story and you need to listen. One gets the feeling that reading this book will set someone free. Who is it? You decide.
-Lisa Marie Basile, author of APOCRYPHAL