Glare by Gabriella T. Rieger

In Gabriella T. Rieger‘s Glare, the poet focuses a probing searchlight without and within. Her poems range from New York (“Have you ridden the express before? You can float“) to Israel (“this land where every place has two names”),  from the personal to the political. In notable poems, a former friend emerges from the past with a hidden agenda. The universality of mourning is addressed, the form of the poem complimenting the theme. These are mature works, a coming of “young middle age,”  in which connections are made and missed, and both change and stasis are observed with an unblinking honesty that continues to allow for hope.

–Marjorie Tesser, Editor, Mom Egg Review

Reading Gabriella T. Rieger‘s poems is like meeting a guide to the heart and body who takes us into spaces that are familiar yet new. She speaks with intelligence about her own experience, her encounters with people, places she inhabits, past and present. She leads us into the detail of ordinary life and shows us how and why it is extraordinary, giving it shape with intimate images and philosophical observations that take us into a stream of thought beyond the poem.

–Peter Bradbury

Glare by Gabriella T. Rieger is a song of survival—of domestic abuse, of generational trauma of the holocaust—and tender beauty. These poems witness with compassion and love with astonishing clear sightedness, from Hebron to New York, up and down the coast of Israel. They sing of delicate balances, of fine-wrought strength, and hope that “will never be a slight approximation of what it was or should have been./instead, it will continue to be harder and easier in unison.”

–Marcela Sulak, author of Mouth Full of Seeds, Decency, and Immigrant