Alice Pero

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Reviews

Glowing January 2014 review by Yvonne de la Vega of LA Poetry Examiner of Thawed Stars and Pero's flute playing.

An oddity of relevance between the symphony and the spoken word is the deliverance of each. However practiced or improvised, the creation of an artist's individual rendition is one that is created by a moment in time and also creates those moments in time when shared with others and become powerful memories for those gathered for such events as a memorial for a loved one. Poetry is the master of defining those moments. Symphony and music is the same as poetry.

Read entire review . . .


Here are reviews of Thawed Stars from Amazon.com

"Lyrical, playful, eccentric, refreshing poetry

Alice Pero writes lean, twisty, surprising lines. She's not afraid of abstractions or even of old-fashioned soaring, but even her flightiest poems ambush us with bits of kitchenware and other earthly trinkets, always, somehow, appropriate. Her ability to move like lightning between familiar and esoteric reminds me of Emily Dickinson, except that in Alice's poems, death is no masterful gentleman, just a bratty kid throwing a tantrum because no one in Alice's world quite believes in him. She's often funny and occasionally (e.g., in her poem "With Very Good Reason", dedicated to the New Yorker) gloriously snide (and spot-on). I found that the book improved as I read, and even on rereading (which the book demanded), I found the first section less compelling than what followed, so I urge browsing readers to sample the later chapters as well as Chapter 1 before making up their minds. I think if you do, you'll find she'd speaking to you and that she speaks VERY well." -- Dean Blehert, Author


"Clean, crisp writing and an eye for everyday wonders.

Her work is highly readable,simple in its rhythms, wonderfully rich in its content. She has obviously put in the hours and effort to hone each of these poems to completeness. Even poems tinged with loss are kept from becoming maudlin or overly wrought. Everything is clean as can be." -- John McGinley, Poetry Now


"These are very moving poems, in the guise of playful jaunts to another realm." -- Reviewer, Amazon.com


"Thawed Stars" by Alice Pero is terrific!

"Thawed Stars, poems by Alice Pero, is full of energy, delight and exhilaration. Poems leap into your mind and become three dimensional experiences. The deceptive innocence, the light-heartedness, rides over a profound wisdom. This is a being, a viewpoint, at play who makes worlds. And the worlds are worth visiting. Some are worth living in. Great art lets you live in it and lives in you. Like a favorite song or painting, some of these poems continue to resonate, and one returns to them as to friends for friendly company. At a time when "serious art" must bow to pain and loss, these poems operate out of a lightness of being so pure that one is in danger of disappearing into a dance. I have read every word of this book and thoroughly recommend it." -- Russell Salamon, Editor


More Reviews . . .

"The perfect blend of humor and insight, fine imagery and universality." Mike Cluff, The Column


"Her verses explode, the word-music and word-harmonies echo and flow, image after image, poem after poem." -- Bruce Silton, artist


"The poems are highly expressive, romantic, passionate, lively, concerned and readable. They go around corners of thought with surprises waiting on the other side…The only thing as good as owning this book is hearing Alice Pero read her own works." -- Ursula Gibson, Poetic Voices


Review of Thawed Stars in the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of The Book Reader:

"What we cannot do is our evolution; what we cannot be is our true destiny. Alice Pero's superb poems link us with the glorious unknown whose lessons are more vivid than our knowledge. 

"I sit in your smile and/the walls fall down/We find reasons for tangents/ and digressions/into flying tapestries and/woven trapezes/The riddle of my last frown dissolved."

Pero is a veteran poet whose delineations of her poems into sections--New Music, Breathless Love, The Evidence, These Birches--only faintly suggest the poems' rich unifications.

"I lie/in acres of skin/and you do not even/wonder why/or consider whether/escape is possible."

Humor, wit, the majesty of mystery. A poem dedicated to The New Yorker tells what she will write, but: 

"I will never mention/the one night I spent/all alone/hugging the moon." 

Icons come crashing down in her vivid eyes, and a whimsy sets in: 

"After the break of dawn/I stepped in the pieces/all day." 

Lovely absences all day bring room for thought, awe: 

"I dropped in to see you/and felt beautiful/and invisible/I held the world/ in my arms, green and captive,/while you whistled/and tap danced/and wondered what that/breeze was." 

Her title poem, "Thawed Stars", is a wonderfully absurd delight about the modern world: 

"I've dipped scores and scores of my stars/in black paint so as not to offend/We must placate placate/ A world of men wearing sunglasses/But beware of thawed stars/They drip."

Is our true heritage in the sides of things? In their glimmering tops? 

"I'll be coming back in late March/when there is a point of remembrance/the crocus proving itself/against the snow."

The romance of discovery, the radiant brilliance, the surprise and laughter are all here in Alice Pero's deeply intelligent insights into the edge of things."

The Book Reader, America's Most Independent Review of Books 

 poems ambush us with bits of kitchenware and other earthly trinkets, always, somehow, appropriate. Her ability to move like lightning between familiar and esoteric reminds me of Emily Dickinson, except that in Alice's poems, death is no masterful gentleman, just a bratty kid throwing a tantrum because no one in Alice's world quite believes in him. She's often funny and occasionally (e.g., in her poem "With Very Good Reason", dedicated to the New Yorker) gloriously snide (and spot-on). I found that the book improved as I read, and even on rereading (which the book demanded), I found the first section less compelling than what followed, so I urge browsing readers to sample the later chapters as well as Chapter 1 before making up their minds. I think if you do, you'll find she'd speaking to you and that she speaks VERY well." -- Dean Blehert, Author


"Clean, crisp writing and an eye for everyday wonders.

Her work is highly readable,simple in its rhythms, wonderfully rich in its content. She has obviously put in the hours and effort to hone each of these poems to completeness. Even poems tinged with loss are kept from becoming maudlin or overly wrought. Everything is clean as can be." -- John McGinley, Poetry Now


"These are very moving poems, in the guise of playful jaunts to another realm." -- Reviewer, Amazon.com


"Thawed Stars" by Alice Pero is terrific!

"Thawed Stars, poems by Alice Pero, is full of energy, delight and exhilaration. Poems leap into your mind and become three dimensional experiences. The deceptive innocence, the light-heartedness, rides over a profound wisdom. This is a being, a viewpoint, at play who makes worlds. And the worlds are worth visiting. Some are worth living in. Great art lets you live in it and lives in you. Like a favorite song or painting, some of these poems continue to resonate, and one returns to them as to friends for friendly company. At a time when "serious art" must bow to pain and loss, these poems operate out of a lightness of being so pure that one is in danger of disappearing into a dance. I have read every word of this book and thoroughly recommend it." -- Russell Salamon, Editor


More Reviews . . .

"The perfect blend of humor and insight, fine imagery and universality." Mike Cluff, The Column


"Her verses explode, the word-music and word-harmonies echo and flow, image after image, poem after poem." -- Bruce Silton, artist


"The poems are highly expressive, romantic, passionate, lively, concerned and readable. They go around corners of thought with surprises waiting on the other side…The only thing as good as owning this book is hearing Alice Pero read her own works." -- Ursula Gibson, Poetic Voices

Last updated:   February 11, 2014