Rollercoaster of Life by Phyllis Carito

Phyllis Carito takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride in this collection with twists and turns and ups and downs from childhood to maturity. Her poems explore universal questions about how to live a meaningful life, “to celebrate this day as given.” There are so many sensual lines and images: “A finback whale swallowing the Hudson” and “golden grass on Navajo red earth.” We witness this poet living with generosity, strength, and melancholy of equal measure. And at ride’s end, she is “readying my heart to give again.”

–Sandy Longley, author of Navigating the Waters and Mothernest. 

Poet Phyllis Carito, in sensible shoes, follows morning stars to coffee, to love, to loss in mid-winter in search of blue skies but finding terror from which to protect children not from chipmunks, nor birds, nor cats, but from the scars of riding into old age through purple clouds. If a reader looks, she can find a fix, or at least get a fix from this silly girl, this teen in heat, this parent pondering growth who maps the territory while plowing ahead through split houses in the bodies of friends and family both lost and found.

She reminds us that our identities come from within, from without, from world events and personal events. We can make ourselves great again when we look at the generations before and after us with giggles and tears and silence. It’s always morning when we have family and art and an appreciation for the finite light we have before us.

Come along with Carito who reminds us, as Robert Frost, put it in “Directive”, “if you’ll let a guide direct you/Who only has at heart your getting lost” you can “Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.” at least for a bit while reading this wonderful collection of poems. Lighten your load by sharing hers.

–Gregg Berninger, Historian and Professor