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"Sauci Churchill's Quiet . . . Collected Poems brings us into a compelling voice that is distinctive in its presence, whether joyous, sad, tender, comic, reflective, or fearful. Whatever the subject, the poems are like lyric conversations, be they memories of growing up on Chicago's streets in the 1940s and 50s; of the world about her - bats, for instance, ""lie in dark places / our pulse pounds in fright // Help us to love them""; of religious belief - ""I never had religion but/ revered the fine grain of wood / polished it with my soft rag to shine""; of travel,"" in ""My First Time in Paris"" ""Pont Neuf, hidden in shadows is wrapped. / Domes emerge and the city begins to dazzle;"" and then of pain, which Sauci had much of and wrote about in the most evocative of ways: ""Washed in the moon's brightness / pain, like the night sky, is vast."" And, the poetry she wrote when she was dying stands by itself, particularly her last words, from which the title of the collection comes, prompted by a trapped sparrow in her porch: "" Quiet.... /That frightened sparrow/ could have been my heart."" The understated elegance of all these embracive poems is a welcoming invitation to share in their intimacy. This book was made possible, in part, by donations to the FLP's ONE LAST WORD Program. ONE LAST WORD helps to bring the last works of gifted poets to the world. We are honored to be publishing her last work."

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Sauci Sharon Churchill was born in 1940 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago. After earning a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, she did graduate work at UC Berkeley. She went on to serve as a government law librarian in Washington, D.C., retiring after 30 years. Sauci lived with her husband, Bruce Butterworth and their shelter dog, Cloud, in Bethesda, Maryland. In November 2010, she was diagnosed with ALS, and died seven months later on June 11, 2011. She is lovingly remembered by Bruce, her daughter Devorah Churchill, and many others. Quiet..., which Bruce has edited, brings together all of Sauci's life-loving and distinctive poetry.

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