The Short List of Certainties

“It’s been a long time since a collection has so affected me. Whether she is writing of our twisted relational lives or of her own seemingly innate sense that something’s wrong, Roma-Deeley writes with that curious blend of authority and self-doubt that marks our best poets. Ultimately, and reassuringly, she finds the affirmation that sustains her through it all; as her title poem urges, “having courage, let us write a word or phrase on the short list of certainties something that sounds very much like praise.” Which is just what she does in this tour de force.” – Sydney Lea, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, and former Vermont Poet Laureate