Dreamscape with Absinthe by Elaine Pentaleri

Elaine Pentaleri’s Dreamscape with Absinthe is a richly patterned, hallucinogenic vision. “The question is how do we live our lives,” Pentaleri writes in “Without Gravity,” and her poems address this question with a generous amplitude of balms and possibilities—love, art, magic, and the pleasures of the material world in coexistence with the wisdom of what’s unseen. Pentaleri has the gift of noticing, and what she notices becomes a door to deepened understanding. These poems undertake as their project nothing less than “to move the earth,” and through spell-like force and music and their extraordinary turns, they just might do so.   

–Karin Gottshall, https://karingottshall.com/  

Dreamscape With Absinthe delivers what the title promises – explorations of edgy places between surrealistic dreams and new ways of seeing reality upon waking. These poems place us on a drawbridge where both dreamworlds and everyday life become visible. From there the poet wanders through time’s playground into the past. Or she may fly, one of the benefits of dreams. Backwards Yoj later becomes Joy. She understands impermanence, both in wind chimes and coastal maps changing with climate change. When the poet says she does not wish for a quiet life, you get it. Pentaleri offers whimsy and humor – she paints god’s wall with dayglow paint. Lyric reflections voice comforting reflections, “Tomorrow will come, /There will be breakfast, and things to be undone.”  

–Tricia Knoll, Poet of Wild Apples and The Unknown Daughter, https://triciaknoll.com/

Elaine Pentaleri‘s collection, Dreamscape with Absinthe, unveils the simple beauty of the world in which we live with a light touch, both observant and alluring. Pentaleri gives us hope in small yet meaningful moments. Her precise and delicate language turns the ordinary into the sublime. A beautiful debut. 

–Erika Nichols-Frazer, https://www.nicholsfrazer.com/about-me