Not Fade Away by Patti Sullivan

As William Carlos Williams admonished, Patti Sullivan finds her inspiring meaning in things. The clutch bag her mother carried, the box stereo in the fifties, the bossa nova, the sunset. “Details find their way” her pastel-painter friend tells her and shows her the pigments that do not fade away .
The details in Sullivan’s book shine with an evocative, enduring luminescence.
–Glenna Luschei –Solo Press, The Sky Is Shooting Blue Arrows, University of New Mexico Press 2014

From the yellow frog’s croak to the jazz chanteuse’s “clear and sweet” note, what we hear in Sullivan’s poems is the attentive voice and the moral stance of a poet who notices the music of the world and gives us “the chance to be surprised.” When we leave these poems, “we’re all the better for it.”
–Dixie Salazar

One of the great pleasures of Patti Sullivan’s poetry is the sensibility behind it: gentle, clear-eyed steady. There’s spaciousness to these poems, with ego and sentiment somehow out of the way, leaving room for joy to detonate and grief to ring true. Glimpse of a side garden, hawk’s gold shadow, nineteen-year-old soldier’s coffin, body counts, a plein air painter’s canvas, a walk in “paper/dusk”-Not Fade Away is rife with seeing and gathering up. This is satisfying work, handled with Sullivan’s light, sure touch, and offered – to borrow a line from the collection’s closing poem – in an act of love.
—lisacoffman.com

One of the great pleasures of Patti Sullivan‘s poetry is the sensibility behind it: gentle, clear-eyed, steady. There’s a spaciousness to these poems, with ego and sentiment somehow out of the way, leaving room for joy to detonate and grief to ring true. Glimpse of a side garden, hawk’s gold shadow, nineteen-year-old soldier’s coffin, body counts, a plein air painter’s canvas, a walk in “paper/dusk”- Not Fade Away is rife with seeing and gathering up. This is satisfying work, handled with Sullivan’s light, sure touch, and offered – to borrow a line from the collection’s closing poem- in an act of love.
–Lisa Coffman

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]