SARAHANNSWAIN

Insomnomancy

"[Insomnomancy] holds my interest line by line, section by section: I sense no filler, nor unripened patches. Ms. Swain has found or been given The Measure, and she has ridden it. Her poetic line is taut, action-oriented, capable of shifting rhetorically (from colloquial to spiritual, sodden to ethereal) in the matter of an instant.

The particular is honored throughout: there is no concession to the blandly universal, which of course makes it all the more likely one might achieve a glimpse of that self-same ray. Somehow she has very quickly assimilated some of the language of the NYC subway system and New York City life, while maintaining the fresh eye of the outsider and coming up with phrasings locals wouldn't use, phrasings that shed new light on the phenomena of urban life."

-Leonard Schwartz

March, 2015