The Open Window by Mary M. Sesso

Sometimes a body is just a place to live, yes; but for Sesso human life encompasses beauty, hope, faith, sexuality, compassion, surprise mixed in with drunken beatings, frightened children, disease and mortal ends. Her advice? Keep imagination around you.  See how the hand-speaking of Sesso’s daughter, who teaches deaf children, creates the arabesques of ballet. See how compassion connects and heals; and how in kinaesthetic vision the sky turns cerulean blue / heaven blue, and hope / puts down a tiny root / even as a poppy bruise / flowers around the IV.

–Judith McCombs, The Habit of Fire: Poems Selected & New

Mary Sesso has given us a testimony to the striving of the human spirit to overcome adversity in its many forms. Cancer, mental illness, alcoholism, birth defect, domestic abuse — no topic is too dark for Sesso to turn a light toward. With a clarity of image and economy of language, she has opened a window into the soul, letting in fresh air in hope of healing the brokenness of this world.

–W. Luther Jett, author of Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of my Father (Finishing Line Press, 2015)

Mary Sesso’s poems are grounded in a nurse s intimate knowledge of the body and a Catholic girl s interest in the soul. They bespeak the wisdom of a versatile Everywoman, a woman of uncertain age whose musings range from fragile as a violet to tough and dark as the grit on your shoes, / the smudge on the tasseled lamp, the soot / on the sill where [she lurks], waiting to fly.

–Moira Egan