The Sky Will Overtake You
Paperback, 102 pages
Read an excerpt from The Sky Will Overtake You
A new book of poems, which reviewer Michael R. Mantell described as “a quietly powerful collection of short poems that speaks to the heart of the reader.” Mantell continues, “Rooted in personal loss and shaped by Jewish wisdom, these poems don’t just speak about grief—they sit with it, offering a deep, intellectually, and emotionally contemplative space where emotion and meaning unfold naturally.”
“In her latest collection, The Sky Will Overtake You, Marcia Falk not only celebrates but also elegizes ‘this loving, dying world,’ examining the lyrical responsibilities of the poet: to create meaning and beauty, to grieve what’s lost, and to express gratitude for every fragile, tenuous moment of being human. Filled with expertly rendered, painterly details that evoke a landscape made vivid with trees, birds, and all kinds of exquisite blossoms, this gorgeous book asks readers to reflect on our own delicate lives. Falk urges us to consider how we ‘belong to the universe’ and how, ultimately, we are each ‘buffeted // and set aloft, / a twig in the wind.’”
—Jehanne Dubrow, author of Wild Kingdom
“Marcia Falk is a poet’s poet. With supreme delicacy and precision, she creates a world of sensuality and longing. Her wondrous poems are work to be held to the heart, ‘riches on riches.’”
—Li-Young Lee, author of The Invention of the Darling
“The poems in The Sky Will Overtake You abound in a rare, infectious, and hard-won ecstasy, the consequence—at least in part—of exquisite attention to whatever they approach. They celebrate ‘the days laid out like jewels / on a merchant’s table’ even as they acknowledge grief and loss and the knowledge that ‘[There is] no keeping anything.’ These poems make ephemerality palpable, establishing it as an essential feature of what we treasure. ‘What Do You Have?’ asks a poem’s title. Its final lines respond, ‘Only this bit of time, / like clouds unforming— / even as you point to it, // gone.’”
—Jacqueline Osherow, author of Divine Ratios
© Marcia Lee Falk.