Possible Sybils: New Poems

About When Sky Lets Go
Just as one feels the density, the pressure of the earth in the hope of the diamond ‘waiting in its blue haze’ one hundred and fifty miles down, so these poems flare with light precisely because their vision is sharpened by the impediments, the irony of ‘Marie Antoinette moving her jewels aside for the blade.’ -Tess Gallagher These poems are like Donne’s … in their ‘metaphysical’ mixture of incongrous elements, their use of outrageous conceit … their limited allusiveness, and mostly in their refusal to allow the speaker (or the reader) any rest, any false resolution of the unrelenting struggle she is locked in. -Robert Holland in Poetry

About Magpie on the Gallows
It is her unstinting commitment to literary excellence and personal integrity in the face of isolation that brings us back again and again to these poems, which continue to render fresh associations and nuances of meaning with each reading. -Carolyne Wright in Prairie Schooner

Madeline DeFrees is the author of six poetry collections, a memoir, The Springs of Silence, and many reviews and essays. For nearly thirty years she was a member of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary and she published her first collection in 1964 under the name of Sister Mary Gilbert. DeFrees has taught at numerous universities, including the University of Massachusetts, where she directed the graduate writing program. She now lives in Seattle and writes full-time.