Watching from the Bleachers

Watching from the Bleachers draws us into engagement with the world in all its brokenness and beauty. Eileen Ivey Sirota's poems traverse the spectrum from the personal to the political -- from the loving ambivalence between a cognitively impaired mother and her adult daughter to outraged examinations of racism, othering and indifference. In the poem "In Which I Interrogate My Frequent Response" the author's own privilege becomes the object of her sharp gaze. Covid and its time-distorting effects are a frequent backdrop to this work. The poems "Master Class" and "Advice to a Freshman" invite whimsical comparisons between the mating behavior of cicadas and college students. The inevitable losses of aging are captured elegiacally but without sentimentality. The broad sweep of these poems is held together by a unique sensibility that combines wit, wonder, outrage and, ultimately, hope.