Sally Woolf-Wade, in her newest poetry collection, Wolf Moon Down, gives us memories of travel, far, far away, and ultimate settling at home in coastal Maine.
She has profound appreciation for Maine's natural beauty, its maritime history, and its often enigmatic folks. Woolf-Wade skillfully weaves various poetic
forms --ghazal, sonnet, haiku, villanelle--among free verse poems to enhance their humor or poignancy. The Wolf Moon lights a seductive path, and issues
a bold invitation that readers are privileged to accept.
--Anne Johnson Mullin, author of Surface Tension and Sometimes a Sonnet
Sarah J. Woolf-Wade's Wolf Moon Down poetry collection fulfills the promise of its title. Wolves howling in hunger apply in these poems directly to human
survival as fellow mammals at the mercy of the cycles of the sea, the ravages of time and accident. Woolf-Wade shows in "Slack Water" that our boat balances
on the lip of time. She does not flinch to remind us how these cycles can heal both the tragedies and yearnings of our mortal natures that reveal deceased
loved ones' faces. These poems want us to remember that we are integral and intimate companions in the living on land which we do not own and the sea,
which we share on our planet Earth.
--Dona Luongo Stein, author of Leaving Greece, Alice in Deutshland,
Heavenly Bodies, Children of the Mafiosi, host of The Poetry Show, KRFC The past lives and shimmers on Sally Woolf-Wade's pages, the way heat bends
vision over summer roads. Astute observer, she wanders lovingly among us in mid-coast Maine, catching moments that are our lives. We're all here, held in
her heart's gentle eye, somehow swept, as she says, by the scent of beach roses.
--Martin Steingesser, Past Poet Laureate, Portland, Maine
The poetry of Sally Woolf-Wade pulsates with honesty and alertness. The changeable sea that appears often in her work is an apt metaphor for the poems
as they touch upon tranquility and fervor, beauty and grief, solitude and empathy. She is a poet whose praise of the physical world is, at once, patient and
cat-quick.
--Baron Wormser, Past Poet Laureate, Maine
Sarah Jane (aka Sally) Woolf-Wade has studied the craft of poetry with John Holmes, Judith Steinbergh, Wes McNair, Billy Collins, Sam Hammill, Betsy Sholl, Baron Wormser, Martin Steingesser, Tom Lux, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and other poets. Most of her adult life has been spent as a teacher, and many summers as mate on a windjammer, sailing daytrippers around the Boston Harbor islands. Her poems have appeared in Northern New England Review, the Mid-American Poetry Review, Off the Coast, The Maine Poetry Review, Puckerbrush Review, Goose River Anthology, Robert Frost Anthology, Wes McNair's "Take Heart" series, Port City Poems, and other Maine presses. She has participated in local readings including CONA's "Peaceful Beginnings," Gordon Bok's "Working on the Water" programs, Wes McNair's "Maine Poetry Express," the 200th Anniversary of the Battle between the U.S.S. Enterprise and the H.M.S. Boxer at Pemaquid Point, and Maine Maritime Museum's "Voices of the Sea." The Maine Poets Society awarded her second prize in 2013 for "No Man's Land" and first prize in 2014 for "Northhaven Autumn." Three collections of poetry include Tidepools, Nightsong, Down the Bristol Road, and a book of historical fiction for young readers, Downwind from Pemaquid, which won Honorable Mention at the New England Book Festival. She is associated with the former Pemaquid Poets Group and the current Maine Poets Society. She lives with her husband in New Harbor, Maine.
