I write poetry and novels under my married name, Erin Zarro. I’ve been writing poetry since I was 11. My dream was to get my poetry out there, and it has been published in various literary magazines (Lucid Moon, Pen & Ink Magazine, Prism Galliard, etc) and I’m happy to announce that I’ve published two poetry chapbooks with Turtleduck Press.
POETRY CHAPBOOKS
Without Wings
Release date: April 1, 2011
Explores the dark side of love — what happens after the happily ever after. Abusive love. Unrequited love. Pain and suffering; healing and redemption.
REVIEWS:
The poems in this book are hauntingly beautiful. So many love poems focus on the good, but this book focuses on what happens when things go wrong. It really resonated at times. I’m not really a fan of poetry but I do recommend this. ~Kit Campbell on Goodreads
This is a powerful collection of poetry. It takes us into the darkness and heartbreak of a rejected love that comes “after the happy ever after.” It takes us deep, and keeps taking us deeper, reflecting the unremitting pain of shattered hopes and dreams. I found I appreciated the collection best by reading one poem at a time, letting it sink in and stay with me for a while before moving onto the next one. Trying to take in more than that at a sitting nearly turned it into a long wail of anguish, which isn’t a fair comment on the
individual poems or the collection as a whole. Erin’s poetry is deep and honest. It deserves to be taken seriously, at its own pace. ~David Bridger on Goodreads
Love is as beautiful as it is raw, and the most intense passion can sour into apathy and remorse. It’s never more raw than it is in “Without Wings,” a poetry chapbook by Erin Zarro about the darker sides of love. Her poetry has a way of painting pictures with negative space– that is to say, the things she withholds from the poems, rather than what she puts in them. She dives right into the depths of emotion without hesitancy, and she has arranged the poems within to create a rhythm throughout the chapbook that flows as well as her poetry itself. As she moves further into the breakup, where you begin to question everything that happened in the past, the poems become scattered and wordier. Sometimes the lines are long, like prose, and at times like little shards of glass. Erin has captured all the loneliness, the disappointment, and regret of divorce in “Without Wings.” It’s not an easy read. She does close with a little glimmer of hope — the idea that she has truly healed and found herself — but the eternal romantic in me would have appreciated one more poem about finding new love. Nevertheless, it’s powerful in its brevity and anyone with a broken heart may find catharsis in its empathy. ~SM Reine on Amazon.com
Life as a Moving Target
Release date: December 1, 2010
Poetry chapbook exploring fibromyalgia and intractable vertigo, from onset of symptoms to getting a diagnosis. Also the aftermath, learning to cope and manage the condition. Poems of hope, courage, and strength of spirit.
REVIEWS:
I don’t read much poetry, but I found this collection stirring and moving. The poems explore the author’s experience with chronic illness, from first symptoms to diagnosis. Zarro has a deft hand with words, and the poems are strong as much for what isn’t there as for what is. ~ KD Sarge on Amazon.com
Some of Erin’s poems hark toward looking for that beauty in the pain, using imagery such as a chrysalis to describe how she felt, hibernating away from the world that she’d grown accustomed to. After reading lines like “I have no voice, no clean perceptions. / Lobotomized, silenced by the bell,” I will never look at a cocoon the same way again.The lines that most affected me:
I tiptoe
upside down
on the tightrope
of life.
Again and again, she uses metaphors for balance, for movement, for focus — tightropes and pirouettes, crawling, tops, the world pulling her along with it. Other images appear, rainbows and fog, medical terms and magic, shadows and shapes. Overall, this is an incredibly moving and personal collection of poems, that deserves to be lingered with, reread, and shared. ~Erin Hartshorn, blog review
To see her full review, go here.
If you’d like to read an excerpt or buy a copy, go here.
AFFILIATE DISCLAIMER: Erin Zarro and Erin Kendall is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.