Reviews of Mandatory Evacuation Zone
Excerpt from annotation by Cortney Davis in the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
"Felice Aull has gathered 63 beautifully crafted poems in which she examines the intricacies of language and loss, of grief and healing. Each of the book's five sections considers these themes in slightly different ways, always in language that is understated, vivid, and exact."
Read full annotation here
Excerpt from Margie Shaheed's book review in Mom Egg Review (http://momeggreview.com/)
"What is most striking about this collection is Aull's ability to grab readers by the hand and take them wherever she decides to go. . . . A voice of authenticity resonates throughout making the poems relatable and relevant."
For the complete review, click here
"Felice Aull has gathered 63 beautifully crafted poems in which she examines the intricacies of language and loss, of grief and healing. Each of the book's five sections considers these themes in slightly different ways, always in language that is understated, vivid, and exact."
Read full annotation here
Excerpt from Margie Shaheed's book review in Mom Egg Review (http://momeggreview.com/)
"What is most striking about this collection is Aull's ability to grab readers by the hand and take them wherever she decides to go. . . . A voice of authenticity resonates throughout making the poems relatable and relevant."
For the complete review, click here
Reviews and Comments on The Music Behind Me
This a fierce and lovely collection of poems in which music—both human and natural—becomes not only a counterpoint to suffering but also a balm for healing. The music might be the “word song” of prisoners writing poems (“Prison Escape”), the trail winds over Dragoon Mountain (“Cochise Stronghold), or the strains of chamber music playing in a Cancer Center lobby (“Not a Concert). Felice Aull examines a wide range of subjects—the destruction she sees in her New York neighborhood, the complexities of family, the anxieties of illness and the strength with which we humans endure in spite of the certainty of death—gently teaching us that while life contains inevitable suffering, it also contains intense joys, the “gifts and losses” that she writes of with wisdom and mercy. These are poems of maturity and insight, poems that are both haunting and reassuring. Aull has the rare talent of looking at life’s realities, seeing clearly the struggles and unexpected joys contained therein, and then translating those moments into poetry.
-- Cortney Davis, author of Leopold's Maneuvers
In The Music Behind Me, Felice Aull explores the brief encounters and small, but telling, details of experience that generate wisdom. She discovers her muse near home on the streets of Manhattan, but also in journeys through time and space to childhood, the Alps, and Arizona. A homeless man in a gray undershirt outside the gates of Gramercy Park, where a brilliant wedding is taking place; a young woman doing sit-ups in the airport at midnight; an ill granddaughter who inexplicably laughs at the gift of a new bib. Like the protagonist of her poem, “The Man on a Box,” Felice Aull responds to these incidents by “exploring / the possibilities.” And she does so with fine craftsmanship and gentle irony. The poet recognizes that even the closest bonds will someday loosen—we are all “slipping toward / the edge of separation”—yet the gifts we share in life are sweet: “No matter that the park is private / and I can't go in -- I claim it. / … These gifts and losses, every year, mine.”
-- Jack Coulehan, author of Bursting With Danger and Music
The Mom Egg, July 9, 2013.
Reviewed by Nancy Vona
Reader Comments:
The collection is wonderfully rich. . . So many [poems] relate to experiences of health, illness, and the body, and directly or indirectly to social justice as well . . . poems about homelessness and men on the street. I am particularly fond of "Gramercy Park" because of the juxtaposition of the inside and outside, white of the wedding and gray of the man begging, distancing of the checks we write and the body we touch when we give on the street.
Marsha Hurst, Director MS in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
. . . spare and powerful, closely observed, unsentimental, yet brimming with emotion. I will treasure this book; and use it in my teaching.
Johanna Shapiro, Director, Program in Medical Humanities and Arts, University of California at Irvine School of Medicine
I intend to read several [poems] to my students. Daughter poems, cancer poems, Alice Neel, forgetting, man on box, Gramercy Park…..they are crisp and illuminating!!!
Lois LaCivita Nixon, Director Masters Program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities, University of South Florida
-- Cortney Davis, author of Leopold's Maneuvers
In The Music Behind Me, Felice Aull explores the brief encounters and small, but telling, details of experience that generate wisdom. She discovers her muse near home on the streets of Manhattan, but also in journeys through time and space to childhood, the Alps, and Arizona. A homeless man in a gray undershirt outside the gates of Gramercy Park, where a brilliant wedding is taking place; a young woman doing sit-ups in the airport at midnight; an ill granddaughter who inexplicably laughs at the gift of a new bib. Like the protagonist of her poem, “The Man on a Box,” Felice Aull responds to these incidents by “exploring / the possibilities.” And she does so with fine craftsmanship and gentle irony. The poet recognizes that even the closest bonds will someday loosen—we are all “slipping toward / the edge of separation”—yet the gifts we share in life are sweet: “No matter that the park is private / and I can't go in -- I claim it. / … These gifts and losses, every year, mine.”
-- Jack Coulehan, author of Bursting With Danger and Music
The Mom Egg, July 9, 2013.
Reviewed by Nancy Vona
Reader Comments:
The collection is wonderfully rich. . . So many [poems] relate to experiences of health, illness, and the body, and directly or indirectly to social justice as well . . . poems about homelessness and men on the street. I am particularly fond of "Gramercy Park" because of the juxtaposition of the inside and outside, white of the wedding and gray of the man begging, distancing of the checks we write and the body we touch when we give on the street.
Marsha Hurst, Director MS in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
. . . spare and powerful, closely observed, unsentimental, yet brimming with emotion. I will treasure this book; and use it in my teaching.
Johanna Shapiro, Director, Program in Medical Humanities and Arts, University of California at Irvine School of Medicine
I intend to read several [poems] to my students. Daughter poems, cancer poems, Alice Neel, forgetting, man on box, Gramercy Park…..they are crisp and illuminating!!!
Lois LaCivita Nixon, Director Masters Program in Bioethics and Medical Humanities, University of South Florida