“Maria Terrone’s scrupu­lous­ly craft­ed, suave­ly cadenced poems record telling details of the quo­tid­i­an world with such vivid­ness that after a while we begin to hear ‘the rush’ of the ‘hidden/city’ of the heart, ‘its roar and rag­ing heat, the wild/dark need­ed to become human.’ The Bodies We Were Loaned is a tri­umph of metic­u­lous sor­row.”
— Sandra Gilbert

“It is ‘the body’s unequiv­o­cal lan­guage’ that Maria Terrone aspires to in this mature­ly achieved first col­lec­tion. In lan­guage pre­cise in its phys­i­cal­i­ty and thought, she cel­e­brates ordi­nary work and those who per­form it, admir­ing the tough, the com­mon, what endures. As keen­ly attuned to what is going on in works of art as in the emo­tion­al states she observes in her­self and those around her, her poems become nota­tions of mood, intense­ly alive to the pass­ing moment, and to all those momen­tary things that are, by the force of her obser­va­tion, ‘dipped in light.’ Acknowledging the body in its dark­er moments, caught in ‘the jail of itself,’ she can also hon­or the ‘word made flesh’ of old love let­ters, or the rich delight of sav­ing an injured bird that’s ‘home­less, hun­gry, bro­ken-legged, maybe heav­en sent.’ What I espe­cial­ly like is her refined appetite for the world, able to see and state clear­ly (in a love poem called ‘Strawberries’) the ‘sim­ple truth of these berries, ripe/just with the mean­ing of them­selves.’ ”
— Eamon Grennan

“In The Bodies We Were Loaned, Maria Terrone presents us with sen­su­ous and sen­si­tive poems that explore the pres­ence of the extra­or­di­nary in the ordi­nary. This pow­er­ful, mov­ing book is a love song to the wound­ed world.”
— Maria Mazziotti Gillan

“Count on it: a poem by Maria Terrone entices. In her first book, The Bodies We Were Loaned, expect sur­pris­es. Maria loves the exot­ic of now and long ago, the local land­scapes of the globe. But she espe­cial­ly loves New York, and read­ing her splen­did poems, I ask, Why not? They cap­ture the joy in sounds and images so vivid, I’m there. I love all the poems in this col­lec­tion.”
— Walt McDonald

“Here the poet­ry starts before we even open the book. The title The Bodies We Were Loaned was apro­pos before the events of September 2001 made it elec­tric with a raw new rel­e­vance. We savor what we know will pass, long for what is passing–be it a Chinese emper­or, a sand­hog or ‘a prophet in flame red lip­stick.’ Here we find them all. Here we also find elo­quence with­out a hint of the facile, a nat­u­ral­ist’s eye avid for tex­tures and detail, and a heart pre­pared to evoke ‘the body’s unequiv­o­cal lan­guage.’ These fine poems are a delight to rec­om­mend.”
— William Pitt Root

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