Sono

Sarah Arvio is a highly original American poet. This book includes the whole of her second collection "Sono" and selections from her first book "Visits from the Seventh", with an audio CD of her reading all of "Sono". Composed during a long stay in Rome, the cantos of "Sono" look outward in order to look inward, transforming sights and stories into expressionistic explorations of the state of the heart. Playful, probing, philosophical, colorful, often funny, they describe a struggle to come to terms with loss and grief and to find a basis for renewal. Riffing expertly, Sarah Arvio brings wit and exquisite formal discipline to her gorgeous meditations on the life lived. These are high-burning songs of the self - colloquial, sexy, unflinching and unforgettable. In "Visits from the Seventh", her wry, uncanny poems take the form of conversations between a woman and a throng of invisible presences, or 'visitors', who counsel, challenge, cajole and comfort her. Together they murmur about destiny, the moon, a walk on Park Avenue, sex, ambition, dreams.