Amy Schrader, a wonderful poet and good friend of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, has just released her first collection of poems, The Situation and What Crosses It, through MoonPath Press.  Check out this wonderful collection of sonnets!  Amy Schrader holds a B.A. in Molecular & Cell Biology and English Literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in English Literature from Boston University. She earned her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Washington. She was a semifinalist for the 2006 and 2007 “Discovery”/The Nation poetry contests, and a recipient of a 2008 GAP grant from Artist Trust.  

These sonnets are like spells, like mirrors, as in funhouse—, smoke &—, magic—, and even ceiling— (oh, the delicious, dirty double entendres!). They are sly forms within forms, these sonnets in the Celtic Cross, stories in poems, the made-up in the real, the work of life in a game. In these playful, lovely pieces, Schrader shows us language trying to see and hear itself, admire and rip its own skins. Reading these poems is like reading all the secrets wedged in all the bottles floating in all the oceans, but be careful—they’re stuffed with bits of heartbreak and danger. —Arlene Ki