Black Eye

Sharon Dennis Wyeth’s poetry mines a family triangle to reveal an "ache of flowering." After the "Black Eye" of hurt, her poems emerge "sheathed in silver." What was hidden, inscribed in memories and shadowed by ghosts, emerges in bruising, burning race and sex. Black Eye damage, blackness, seeing and recovery. Through these searchings, we can understand what we also must try to uncover about our heritage and ourselves.

Francis Klein, author of Dais, Untouched by Morning and Podebrady

In Black Eye, Sharon Dennis Wyeth renders each broken blood vessel in vivid color, deftly weaving poems about domestic abuse with her own awakening to the politics of race, color, and womanhood. These poems are bold in their confrontation of a past laced with pain and resilience, unapologetic in examining colorism and passing in the black community, and prismatic as they delve into dream worlds that explore a fragmented interior mirroring the bruised and healing exterior. As Dennis Wyeth writes in "The Sin of It" these poems "ache of flowering."

Teri Ellen Cross Davis, author of Haint