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A collection of sharp, accessible 5-line poems depicting moments in a life, from corporate offices to domestic life to international travel.

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Reviews

Drops from Her Umbrella

"In the best way of contemporary poets who work in form, Laura Maffei has taken the tanka and made it her own. This collection functions as a poignant yet clear-eyed memoir in tanka, juxtaposing the sensual with the workaday, mordant social commentary with the hope--and sometimes the reality--of ferocious intimacy. The poet writes: 'my neighbor/ plays his guitar/ through the wall/and I am three chords/ less lonely'; having recognized our own complicated experiences in these poems, we too come away from this collection feeling both imagistically satisfied and much less lonely."
-- Moira Egan, author of Cleave and Bar Napkin Sonnets

"Her poems leap over the gap between the sexes with a graceful and un-pretended emotional continuity [...] Here, in Maffei's world, diet books and bug spray, apartments and snaking traffic, single packets of Caesar salad dressing, malls and fridges, and the unforgettable 'infant Batman,' are the fingerprints of time and place. How extraordinarily well Maffei has captured and enlarged them, making them reveal to us our world and her world, opening to us her life as a woman, friend, wife, lover, teacher, poet, and 'girl/with a strong squeeze.' "
-- the Afterward by Michael McClintock (President of the Tanka Society of America)

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Advance Praise for Girl with a Secret

"In this candid and irresistibly readable memoir, muscular dystrophy operates as a startling metaphor for the profound sense of otherness all adolescents feel. Laura Maffei describes, with spot-on memory and best girlfriend prose, the trials and tribulations of normal girlhood, all the while battling the threats of a frightening question mark, the diagnosis of a possibly debilitating condition. Against this backdrop, the usual quandaries of boys, clothes, and friendships become fraught with added poignancy. Adults and teenagers will be amazed by how closely they relate to Maffei's experience. This is a wonderful and important book, sure to resonate with women of all ages."
-- Nina de Gramont, author of Gossip of the Starlings and Every Little Thing in the World


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