Cover Art by Beth Barnett.
These 64 poems are divided into two sections, Sorrows and Sweetness. These poems are very personal and intimate, yet firmly grounded in the real world. They cover such topics as Latine culture, family, feminism, home, memory, health, food, and cats. Overall, this book is a celebration of life in both grief and joy.
Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is a queer, disabled author of Latine descent, and a senior editor at Gleam. To date, her work includes poetry, horror, science-fiction, fantasy, children's books, and literary fiction. She hopes to add to the list. She is extensively published in literary venues around the world. Recent honors include: 2023 Rhysling Award Finalist, 2022 SFFP Speculative Poetry Contest (Honorable Mention), 2021 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest (Finalist), and the 2019 Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize (Winner). Her work has also received multiple Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Rhysling Award nominations. A poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, is now available from Gnashing Teeth Publishing. A short story collection, Screaming Intensifies, is forthcoming from Whiskey City Press. She lives in Kansas City, MO. https://linktr.ee/laurenscharhag
"Once again, Lauren Scharhag demonstrates accomplished skill and innate talent for sorting skeins of traditional homespun yarns into contemporary designs. Within the framework of each poem, upon a warp of sorrow grounded in absence and denial, Scharhag threads the grist of immigrant and first-generation relatives sharing and not sharing hard memories. A legacy of uncles serving out lives in prison, darkness and loss surrounding births, the dull drag of loved ones aging toward death, the vibrant energy of childhood in an urban landscape all intertwine to anchor the backbone of a brilliant life tapestry. Through a weft of sweetness where the ground beneath warms and softens, those shining threads of witness and hope a poet shuttles into creative patterns, Scharhag distills memories of light and joy contained in everyday tasks like sorting beans with a grandmother and treasuring objects such as an heirloom swan-shaped soap dish. The complex tangled bonds of history and family weave expertly through this collection casting a rustic mosaic to pass down through generations."-Shelly Norris, author of Hyperbola (Impspired Press)
"This is a book of pain and life and tiny joys: Aztec warriors, divorce and plastic flamingos, broom guitars, dementia and familial sacrifices, the loss of pets and people to terrible diseases, and family serving long prison sentences "growing old before their time, fashioning objects that they intend to set loose, like doves at a funeral." Masterfully written with such a vibrant descriptive language, Lauren Scharhag's Ain't These Sorrows Sweet is everything I love about great writing. When there is pain, you feel it; when there are moments of sweet joy, it is the same. You know the author has truly lived these experiences and is able to transport you to wherever she pleases with both a sincere clarity and levelling eye rooted in such a wonderful wash of language and feeling. Whether it be a failed clock drawing test for dementia or recovered treasures from a ceramics graveyard, the inevitable cloud of our own mortality hangs over everything. Our lives speckled with sorrow and time like those speckled seed bodies and old enamel soaker pot in "Sorting the Beans." Lauren Scharhag's Ain't These Sorrows Sweet is a sincerely unflinching and beautifully courageous reminder of human perseverance and "of how time cuts us all down to size.""-Ryan Quinn Flanagan, author of Kiss the Heathens (Roadside Press)
