ORIOLING

“Some months after the judging panel chose Ann Silsbee’s Orioling as the winner of the Ben Saltman Award from Red Hen Press, I reread the manuscript only to find myself totally bowled over by the poems. Silsbee brings so much to the table in her poetry, it’s hard to know where to begin to praise such work. I had loved this collection from my first reading of it, but subsequent readings have put me in awe of the wonderful spirit behind the poems and the exquisite language of which they are made. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d say “The Ten Thousand Things,” but that’s just because it’s a perfect movie of the creative process. There’s no doubt in my mind but that this book is going to open some eyes and put a star on the map wherever Ann Silsbee spends her time.”

―Eloise Klein Healy

Ann Silsbee grew up in Urbana, Illinois, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with one foot in the ocean at Martha's Vineyard when it was still an unknown island off the coast of Cape Cod. A pianist and composer, her musical works in all genres have been performed and recorded in the United States and abroad. Her poems have been published in the Atlanta Review, Seneca Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and many other poetry journals. Her chapbook, Naming the Disappeared, was published by Vista Periodista. Married to the physicist Robert Silsbee, and mother of three grown sons with families of their own, she lived in Ithaca, New York. The woods, hills, and gorges of her home were an inexhaustible source of imagery for her poems. Ann Silsbee passed away on August 28, 2003.