In her commanding second full-length collection, Martha Deborah Hall offers readers more of what they have come to love about her poetry: elegant craft, precise detail, concise language and considerable emotion. These poems are concerned with the every day, with the acutely experienced moments that make up a full life, replete with joys and grief. Here "red leaves checker lawns," "a snowplow clangs it's iron song," "lipstick's smeared from so-longs," and "a first dahlia beats through the soil." When you visit My Side of the Street arrive hungry because you'll be treated to a feast of "leftover turkey for supper," "pizza-cake," "purple ice cream," and Hall's thoroughly nourishing verse.
Lana Hechtman Ayers, publisher,
Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Series
This is the writing of the completely engaged observer. She has seen life in its vivid splendor, its savage malice, its occasional grace as well as in the unsung everyday reality we all share. . . . Losses have been suffered and grieved, gains applauded and savored. Hall knows that life itself is inherently unfair, and has accepted it. . . . Hall has found wisdom and some of that wisdom is shared here. It is shared by a confident poet who has managed to express those moments, both the bitter and the splendid as well as those moments in between with an exceptional lack of artifice - no makeup here. Not even a slick of lip gloss.
Hall is for real, and I can think of no higher praise.
Frances LeMoine, writer, editor, publisher
The poignancy here is palpable and compelling.
Ottone M. Riccio, author of The Intimate Art
of Writing Poetry
