Bücher von Sally Van Doren

The word "sibilance" refers to pronunciations of the letter "s," including the emission of a hissing or whistling sound. As the title of Sally Van Doren's fourth collection of poetry, the word alerts readers to the sounds of language in the poems that follow in abecedarian order. Filled with wordplay, Van Doren's poems vacillate between the extremes of joy and despair, by turns witty and chagrined, punning and reflective. The poems gathered in Sibilance aim to clarify their author's ambivalence concerning living life and writing about it. Her unique investigations teem with distilled images encased in the language of irreverence and awe.

Playfully invading the traditional territories of poetry, Sally Van Doren throws into question form, subject matter, and the sound and meaning of words. The poems in Sex at Noon Taxes mix straightforward narrative, midwestern vernacular, and linguistic ambivalence, embedded in which is a struggle between the mind and the body.

Features a series of short lyric poems, contemplative vignettes of daily life that examine friendship, marriage, and family with a veneer of playfulness. These poems take us into a space where a year is compressed into minutes and a small trickle of memory floods the mind.