Books
Cover art, Christon Ashton
Voices Through Skin (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011)
Theresa Senato Edwards' poems bring to mind Georgia O'Keefe's evocative flower paintings. However, in their journey between mind and body, the petals have withered; the colors have fractured into becoming even more fervent in their desire to live after being touched by loss and anguish. ~ Arlene Ang, Author of Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu
A wonderful, disquieting sense of physicality to these poems. They convey the subtle and angular sensation of lived life. . . . This poet knows how to end poems, too. She catches the breath. That's something rare. ~ JP Briggs, Editor, Connecticut Review
Edwards digs up a blooming, vining garden of pain, unafraid of getting her hands dirty, taking her readers through layered images of hurt (both historic and personal), and guiding our fingers over the worried notch on her childhood door, drawing us into a "smooth wooden pool of calm." Hers is a work of terrible beauty.
~ Annmarie Lockhart, Editor, vox poetica
Voices Through Skin is a study of imperfection and difficulty. Each poem illustrates the way suffering makes us human, makes us less than perfect. The scars that appear from this struggle, earned at great cost, anchor us to the world. ~ Christine Klocek-Lim, Author of How to photograph the heart
Cover art, Lori Schreiner
Painting Czeslawa Kwoka ~ Honoring Children of the Holocaust
(unbound CONTENT, 2012)
This collaboration between painter Lori Schreiner and poet Theresa Senato Edwards was inspired by photographs taken at Auschwitz by Holocaust survivor Wilhelm Brasse. The photographs sent Schreiner to the canvas and her paintings set Edwards' to paper/computer. The resulting collaboration brings the children behind the images to life, gives perspective and dimension to their personhood, lends vitality to their memory. The reader gets a sense of what each individual child might have been like, what each little life might have meant.
The children portrayed in this work came from Belgium, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, and Ukraine; they were Jewish, Roman Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, Gypsy, mixed race, gay. They are representative of the spectrum of lives lost in the Holocaust. The art and poetry in this book juxtapose indelible lives with catalogued identification numbers as the artists confront the inhumanity of the Holocaust, bringing the reader along to witness.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland provided information about the children in this book and granted permission to reproduce their photographs.
Cover art, Christon Ashton
The Music of Hands (Webbook exclusive, Seven CirclePress, April 2014; and print, self published)
The preciousness of time passing, the humbling legacies and pain-both sharply physical and hauntingly figurative-of desire, all become charged with insight in Edwards' intense and fiercely lyrical voice.
~ Cyril Wong, author of Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light
These poems are prayers spoken with a voice as pure and succinct as the sanctuaries it describes. And we are guided through this voice's fear by miraculous images, radiant pearls of light. For these reasons, for the humanity intrinsic in the "offering up" of prayer, I love this collection. ~ Lane Falcon, author of The Making of a Mountain
"Man folds me along the edges," Edwards writes, "like fresh linen mother placed in dresser drawers." Edwards' poetry is a brave and endearing exploration in the meaning of womanhood in contemporary America. To write as a woman is to be political; and through her crisp language and sharp imagery, this book leaves nothing unturned. ~ Ocean Vuong, author of Burnings
When the narrative begins, "At 51, I can live without you, weathered pear, / matched muscle of my sisters, like mother's body" there is transformation; and we are drawn into the red tent. Edwards' poems are memory and fortune-teller, motherbaby and birth, and find beauty in the cramped spaces most overlooked. ~ Tzynya Pinchback, author of How to Make Pink Confetti
CHAPBOOK
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Green (Finishing Line Press, 2016)
I truly enjoyed reading and mulling over Edwards' carefully constructed short lines within this lovingly rendered 24-page story poem, focusing on small but unique and impactful family memories of old plants growing inside new eyes, of "blood spots seeping through / the indexes," of a youthful mind's ever growing library: parts of the stacks rising and evolving, parts of the stacks worried about losing their vibrancy, growing stale, and falling down. ~ Juliet Cook
Theresa Senato Edwards is one of my favorite living writers, and Green may be her best work yet. Having recently lost my mother and feeling like I’m on the verge of losing someone else I love as much, I find myself returning to this chapbook as I would a good friend to share grief and fond remembrance. And though immersed in loss, I somehow find my life less wan and my loving richer. ~ John Burroughs
Cover art, Bill Ripley
Green (Another New Calligraphy, 2015)
SOLD OUT/OUT OF PRINT
Theresa Senato Edwards does not have the answer to the riddle of sorrow, but does provide an emotive metaphor for the process of grieving and the prospect of hope in her narrative long-form poem, Green. A young man's experiences in his grandmother's house help him to realize his grief in the strange and simple, yet altogether profound manner that befits a man exploring his life and the love that it contains. This poignant story is accompanied by the author's reinterpretation of a piano sonata movement written by herself and recorded some thirty years ago, a metaphor itself for the longevity of warm remembrances. ~ Bill Ripley