It Was Not Right To Love Him So Much by Sondra Melzer

Sondra Melzer’s heart-rending collection traverses the territory of intimacy and recollection with skill and tenderness. She traces for us, her fortunate readers, the most private corners of experience as she engages in “talking in women’s talk, of children born and unborn.” We come away from her words moved, enlightened, emboldened, forever changed for having read her poetry.
–Heather Corbally Bryant, author, Orchard Days

In these tenderly beautiful poems, Sondra Melzer explores a liminal, luminous space between “never enough” and “too much.” Here is the grieving and joy and sweetness and terror of a life well and deeply lived—from a teacher who shows us how to feel.
–Dominique Browning, author, Slow Love Life

Melzer’s book opens with an urgent chant, “it must be told, it must be told”—and it must. It must be told that girls who “listen to their heartbeats” can survive a violent childhood and the griefs of motherhood. It must be told that there’s joy in finding a profession that “fills you up/to give so much.” The final poem, an ode to a daughter, a gifted child loved “not enough, not enough,” serves as a fitting final mantra for this suite of poems about a life so full of passion.
–Marietta Brill, author, Ravita and the Land of Unknown Shadows

Sondra Melzer captures the wisdom of a lifetime spent among great literature, love and loss, turning that knowledge into poetry that reaches the reader’s heart. She shows how teachers are called to “breathe life into those empty faces or waiting bodies sitting, standing as if you had such power.” Melzer’s readers will understand why they love so much the teachers who’ve used that power to change lives.
–Harris Lirtzman, literacy coach