Nothing But the Sea

Elizabeth Cusack's latest exploration of Sappho and the perplexing dilemmas of love is a combination of prayerful entreaties to Aphrodite to bring that solace and then reminiscences of surviving the loss. These are poems of what love offers, of having love, and then joy eclipsed by circumstances as impersonal as war and as intimate as betrayal. Difficult times require clarity of insight, and in these poems we hear, as though through a tangy sea-borne breeze, a voice both ancient yet alive with passionate vibrancy. Harry Kollatz Jr., Carlisle Montgomery