Published by The Poetry Box

These poems are a meditation on the myriad divisions and inequities we face, both personally and as a society. In Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, Emily-Sue Sloane pulls on many of the fraying threads that divide us and gently weaves them with striking imagery to inspire connections through hope and, at times, humor.”

BOOK DETAILS:
Released March 8, 2024
Paperback; 6 x 9 inches
52 pages
[ISBN: 978-1-956285-52-9]

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR "DISCONNECTS AND OTHER BROKEN THREADS"

In Emily-Sue Sloane’s powerful new chapbook, Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, the poems’ directness about suffering, loss and injustice tears at our hearts and asks us to recognize what needs healing or that we must grieve bravely what may never be healed. Sloane sees, feels and speaks with honesty that will not accept the glib comfort of pretense. In “A Daughter’s Question,” she says of the speaker’s mother: She never said / and I never thought to ask / until it was too late / what made her so angry. The poem reaches out with a broken heart. It asks us to open ours. Sloane suggests again and again, with rage, regret, humor, irony and anger: This is what it takes to be alive.
Scudder Parker, poet and author of Safe as Lightning

Reading these poems is like microdosing on the big, unwieldy emotions we may struggle to put into words late at night around a campfire, looking up at the stars. Like a gardener cultivating a bonsai tree, Emily-Sue Sloane takes big, wild concepts like mortality, impotent rage, grief and regret and presents them to us as stark small snapshots of everyday life. The overwhelming world pulls back a little as these words gently take our hands and say, I know. I know. Me too.
Rorie Kelly, singer/songwriter, Shadow Work (album)

In Disconnects and Other Broken Threads, Emily-Sue Sloane protests the ills of society which destroy people and ideals, the personal failings which lead to broken lives and the eternal human lament upon the death of beloved persons. Indignant of social injustices, she deconstructs the makeup of contemporary life, giving a thundering voice to the voiceless (“Hollow-Eyed Hunger,” “Freedom Canceled,” “Undone”).

In spite of the wonderfully tantalizing title, the poet weaves subtle hidden connections—how wonderful or ironic that in this chapbook’s very first poem, “Hard-Wood Wisdom,” the lyric voice is that of an oak tree’s bark speaking in first person. The connection is unmistakable. Compassion, love, ideals and dreams underlie the brokenness. Throughout, the reader will encounter and enjoy the music traditionally associated with poetry, but all too often absent today—alliteration, assonance, rhythm: Time shreds memories / into random wisps, / seaweed swept ashore / only to be snatched / back by rapacious tides.
Tonia Leon, bilingual poet and translator,
author of My Beloved Chaos and 
Slow-Cooked Poetry/Poesia a fuego


 

“We are Beach Glass”
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Also available at bookshops and libraries, including:
Walt Whitman Birthplace Assn. Gift Shop
South Huntington Public Library
West Babylon Public Library
...and more...
Request the book from your local bookstore or library! [ISBN: 978-1-66780-875-8]  

Full-length collection! (2022)