Joanne Zarrillo Cherefko

A Consecration of the Wind Joanne Zarrillo Cherefko

"Joanne Cherefko makes a visceral, emotional connection with her readers. Her blistering and brilliant poems are filled with a lush bleakness that is both moving and universal." - Rich Follett, author of Silence, Inhabited, Responsorials, and Human &c. Joanne Cherefko's debut collection, A Consecration of the Wind, charts the poet's tentative journey from loss and isolation to salvation through love. She deftly weaves startling imagery of inner and outer landscapes, divided selves, and a vulnerability that permeates the collection. Her most complex poems embrace the surreal atmosphere of sleepless nights as a motherless daughter swirled "in a raptureless cocoon" of angst and despair as she attempts renewal "in waters stagnant with resolve."Other poems provide a narrative of her life as a single woman navigating the pitfalls of dating ("Trolling at the Jersey Shore") and finding love, despite "How dark and blue/And unpredictable/Her waterways were/And how susceptible they were/To lightning and hail."