Light’s Battered Edge: Poems: ($15, 96pp, 6X9″, Print ISBN: 978-1-68114-217-3, EBook ISBN: 978-1-68114-218-0, LCCN: 2015917029, November 2015; Purchase on Amazon or Barnes & Noble): “The familiar Gospel song may reassure us that, ‘His eye is on the sparrow,’ but for those at the battered edges of our society, too often it doesn’t seem that way. Here, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri catches sight of ‘a sparrow by its own forgotten self,’ and that sparrow stands in for other ‘forgotten’ ones: the homeless, the wrecked, the ill, a family of forebears ‘visited’ by comprehensive Job-like ‘Misery.’ Even as she shows us ‘light’s battered edges,’ however, Sahms-Guarnieri makes us sharply aware of ‘life playing/ disharmoniously and harmoniously’: love so close it’s ‘like being safely snug inside/ the lining of another’s skin’; earth itself surrendering ‘to each/ sunset’ ‘in a thankful swaying sort of way’; a soul snatched up animistically, ‘lifting, lifting, lifting into light.’ These compelling poems leave us disquieted, as much by beauty as by sorrow.” —Nathalie F. Anderson, Author of Quiver; Professor, Swarthmore College
“Think of the spirit of place as the frame of memory shaping language, of the perpetual soliloquy of being who you are in counterpoint with echoing phrases others have uttered at or to you, and you will have some idea of the chant and enchantment of the poems gathered in Light’s Battered Edge. There are some hard truths in these poems—about abusive spouses, about the wear and tear of caring for others. But underlying it all is the sense of what love really means.” —Frank Wilson, Books, Inq.; The Epilogue
“She made her mark in gymnastics at Roxborough High School and Turners Gymnastics, and is a member of the Roxborough Sports Hall of Fame./ Then she turned to literary acrobatics. She is now making her mark as a poet./ Anaphora Literary Press has released, Lights Battered Edge, a collection of poems.” –Justine Heinze, “Roxborough Native Releases ‘Tragically Beautiful’ Poetry Collection,” Roxborough-Manayunk Patch: http://patch.com/pennsylvania/roxborough/roxborough-native-releases-tragically-beautiful-poetry-collection
Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, a native Philadelphian, is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Images of Being (Stone Garden Publishing, September, 2011) and Night Sweat (Red Dashboard Press, January, 2016). She has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Philadelphia Stories, Blue Collar Review, and Wilderness House Literary Review, among others. Awarded a grant in poetry from the AEV Foundation in 2013, she is the 2015 “Winner” of Partisan Press’s “Working People’s Poetry Competition.” She currently serves as Poet in Residence at Ryerss Museum and Library and as Poetry Editor of the Fox Chase Review. More about Diane can be found at http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/ & https://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com/
Anaphora Literary Press 