With a perfect blend of whimsy, poignancy, hard realism, light-heartedness, and deep-heartedness, Dale Lombardi's spare and gentle poems invite us to sit still, look for a long time, and discover the depths. They touch on beauty, grief, violence, tears, and wonder. They make us pause, or praise, or laugh. They awaken us, as one says, to "the perfect givenness of things." Read slowly and savor long. -Steve Garnaas-Holmes, author, Unfolding LightVapor Trails is a window reflecting what it is like to be human, allowing the reader to experience a different sky after each read. In this evocative collection, Lombardi bends time and gives silence a voice with verses containing heart and bone. The spoken, the written, and the unsaid are like water, therapeutic and necessary. Each poem offers a glimpse of light, a void to fill, and a song to discover. Lombardi's words are ever-flowing, breathing, and reawakening, proving that poetry never ceases to be, and any blink of an eye can spark wonder. -Elaine Nadal, author, The Undressing of a MoonThe best poems have at their core something active, kinetic, an undercurrent of movement, as if each poem is a dance stepped in words. Dale Lombardi's work is filled with this lyric choreography, inviting the reader to dance with each verse. -Andrew Joffe, actor, director, librettistVapor Trails is full of startling truths: a moment that "made of me a doorway through which I could leave," or praise for "the honesty of winter, the way things are pared to their essence." Life's troubles are here, though she reminds us, "sometimes there's an aria" hiding inside a teardrop. Humor is peppered throughout, as in poems like "Swedish Death Cleaning," where not objects, but facts, are cast out. Ultimately, Dale encourages us to believe in wonder, which "remains, keeps its word, grows wild, grows wings" and to "call out again" into the canyon of life, when the first answer is not the one we want. -Karen Warinsky, author, Dining with War and Beauty & Ashes
