Winner of the Robert McGovern Prize from Ashland Poetry Press

“Whether con­fronting mat­ters close to home and fam­i­ly, tak­ing in grit­ty facets of the urban land­scape, or bring­ing to sym­pa­thet­ic light anony­mous, main­ly female work­ers in the shad­ows and giv­ing each her moment of per­fect­ly artic­u­lat­ed pres­ence, Maria Terrone’s poems are qui­et­ly insis­tent, recu­per­a­tive acts of imag­i­na­tion. At times spiced by a wry humor, at times open­ing to small touch­es of rap­ture (‘I rise dai­ly, a mir­a­cle’), this Secret Room in Fall sug­gests a world that is one ‘dense, resplen­dent car­go,’ of which the poet takes exact­ing, lov­ing stock.”
— Eamon Grennan

“Even over-famil­iar sub­jects like 9–11 are trans­formed in Maria Terrone’s imag­i­na­tion to fresh, intrigu­ing jour­neys. New York and Italy, mod­ern life and dis­tant his­to­ry are acute­ly observed, lead­ing the read­er into ‘secret rooms.’ Pedicurists, work­ers of many sorts, artists and wid­ows are all shown striv­ing for some tran­scen­dence, some unnam­able beau­ty. Like ‘a bril­liant kalei­do­scope, the sea we hold with­in / will allow us to sail through our own lives, / unharmed.’ In such dec­la­ra­tions Terrone speaks for us all.”
— David Mason

“A Secret Room in Fall is a com­pelling, imag­i­na­tive col­lec­tion not to be missed. The poems move eas­i­ly among their many contexts–history, lit­er­a­ture, auto­bi­og­ra­phy, trav­el, and sub­tly lov­ing, per­sua­sive por­traits. The man­u­script opens with an Egyptian queen assert­ing the tricky ubiq­ui­tous­ness of the dead, and goes on to sur­prise and delight with oth­er unex­pect­ed speak­ers and odd con­clu­sions. Its people–Blanche, fan­ci­ful namer of col­ors; a hand­i­capped man on a train plat­form; obliv­i­ous­ly hap­py young lovers cart­ing their mat­tress in the sub­way; ‘The Woman Ironing’–all acquire biogra­phies through the sit­u­a­tions assigned them and the details that give them a hold on the read­er’s atten­tion and mem­o­ry. As an immi­grant with an insid­er’s under­stand­ing of the diver­si­ty of America, I respond­ed vis­cer­al­ly and joy­ous­ly to ‘The Fruited Plain,’ with­out miss­ing the poem’s hints of hopes unful­filled and dreams often deferred. This is a rich, gen­er­ous serv­ing of the fruits of poet­ic obser­va­tion, of atten­tion to ‘voic­es from oth­er rooms’ that speak of real­i­ties beyond what can be per­ceived.”
— Rhina Espaillat

“This is live­ly and inci­sive new work.”
— Maxine Kumin

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