Pat Barone’s new book of poetry, Your Funny, Funny Face, illuminates the passages of a marriage and its many revelations of desire and mortality. In stunning language, Barone reflects on all the transformations we make as women, partners and mothers. Poignant and wise in the telling of her loss, we see sorrow as one more way to find tenderness and newly recognized wonder. There is a luminous harmony in this couples’ voices, but also honesty in their ‘backward forward dream’. This is a testament about how one makes a map together with a loved one. A truly beautiful book.
Patricia Barone’s latest book, Your Funny, Funny Face, Blue Light Press, is her fourth book, third collection of poetry. A previous collection, The Scent of Water is from the same press. New Rivers Press published her first book of poetry, Handmade Paper, and a novella, The Wind. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Bless Me Father, by Plume/Penguin, and Inspired by Tagore, Birmingham, England, as well as others from Peter Lang, Prentice Merrill, and Wising Up Press. Periodicals include The American Poetry Journal, The Shop (Ireland), Great River Review, Pleiades, Commonweal, The Seattle Review, Visions International, and the Widener Review. She has received a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction in poetry, a Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Award for a short story, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Career Opportunity Grant for a workshop with the Irish poet Eavan Boland.
