by Dave Morrison, poet and musician, Camden, ME

The best poems can perform a wonderful sly trick; while exploring the poet's heart you can learn something about your own. THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS is a treasure chest of these kinds of poems. The poems of Alice Persons illuminate complex feelings with artiful simplicity; they are cinematic like a silent movie, sweet like a first kiss or final goodbye, audacious, heartbreaking, and often both. If you are a lover of poetry, read this book. If you have never found a reason to love poetry, read this book. You will thank your lucky stars.

by Ted Bookey, poet/teacher, Readfield, ME

Persons' poems clap the net over the butterfly of the moment. They have an eye for detail and the bottom line, pay attention to the loud business of LIFE. They give you an in body experience: "what it was like to leave/how it feels to go back;/what you left,/what you carry with you/all the messy, vivid indoor life of the heart" - all those familiar, small-enormous things. I cherish the poems' tenderness, humanity and affirmation, their balance of wit and high seriousness - poems that are kidding and are not kidding at once. There's a transparency of language that makes you feel like you're not reading poetry at all, simply listening to an energetic, wise and entertaining conversationalist who really knows you. Some don't even sound like poetry--except for being so absolutely, tastily IT, poems about aboutness: "I'm a city woman./Give me poems with kitchen tables,/toast crumbs,/books and magazines,/Grandmother's plates,/postcards from Florida,/baby pictures,/Scrabble tiles,/the smell of Sunday roast.." What foods these morsels be!