Diving and Rising by Lois Rosen

Reading Lois Rosen’s Diving and Rising, immediately I feel the warm presence of the person who has made the poetry. This poet has grown from a self-assertive child to a generous-spirited woman. She has ejected herself from the constricting environment of her parents’ one-bedroom Yonkers apartment but, even from across the continent in Oregon, vividly evokes both its dreariness and the delights that burst open its walls. People whom the poet has admired, students she fondly remembers, friends dear to her, and her mother, whose resisted admonishments she now recalls with understanding—all come alive on the page.

So, wonderfully, does the poet herself. She is a kindergarten ballerina wearing her tutu all day, a young diver with no need of a springboard, a South Bronx middle school teacher taking her class to a Park Avenue avian specialist to get care for an injured duck. She stays at the hospital for a friend’s surgery and giggles with her afterward as they share a cherry popsicle treat. Stroking a Japanese anemone’s velvety stems, she remembers that her mother’s only garden was a sweet potato rooted in a glass. She thrills at the taste of fresh pizza in Rome. Cuddling with her husband on the couch as they watch “Dancing with the Stars,” she “give[s] us a 9.”

She is full of spunk. She is all tenderness.

–Eleanor Berry, Past President, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, Author of No Constant Hues and Only So Far

“Even the sweetest berries leave stains.” Such is the feast of Lois Rosen’s poetry. In a lifetime-spanning leap, this collection dives deep into heartbreaks, losses, and injustices and surfaces buoyant with grace. Diving and Rising will stain your fingers with the delicate complexity of witness and wonder. It will stoke your appetite for life.

–Sage Cohen, author of Writing the Life Poetic