This is excellently controlled craftsmanship, conveying deeply felt emotion.The grief of loss is sharply poignant and real, yet never maudlin or self-indulgent. The music of the lines is subtle and fine. The tension between the controlled craft and the poignancy of the theme makes the reader participate in the poems and feel with the poet, sharing the human despair and transcendent emotions that bring us through to survival.
- Daniela Gioseffi
2006 Bordighera Prize contest judge
In her exquisite first collection of poems, Emily Ferrara reveals the unexpected power of regeneration at the core of a grieving mother's heart. From the initial hot coals of loss to her final vision of God's force, these poems take us on a journey of transformation. Catalyzed by nature, faith, family and friendship, written in a voice that is stunning and direct, Ferrara weaves her magic with the language of poetry. These poems convince me, that in Ferrara's skilled hands, we truly have a poetry of healing.
- Richard M. Berlin
True to its title, The Alchemy of Grief is a book of mystical transformations. The leaden weight of unthinkable loss is transmuted into the precious quicksilver of remembrance and survival, while the plainsong of Anglo-Saxon is translated into operatic Italian. Emily
Ferrara thus shows us all that it means to be a healer: giver of life, lover despite death, and speaker of the truth that between these we can measure only the slightest difference, which is infinite beauty.
- Rafael Campo