Laced with the elegance and spirituality of well-honed traditional and invented forms, Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas's new collection Alice in Ruby Slippers is an adult's romp through the surreal Wonderland we call life. Just as Lewis Carroll's Alice struggled with the myriad denizens down the rabbit hole, Carol Lynn's Alice, perhaps Carol herself, navigates a deeply poetic landscape of death-lost, gained, and unrequited love-terminal illness, troubled ancestry, and all that makes this world a place we should simultaneously cherish and fear. Alice in Ruby Slippers is a wonderfully imagistic search for sense in the crumbling ruin of our known world. And a wonderful addition to Stevenson's poetic menagerie. -Indigo Moor, Poet Laureate Emeritus, Sacramento, CA Alice in Ruby Slippers begs to be read aloud to an audience or a lonely room. These poems lean toward icons of the familiar in a voice we want to draw nearer to. Grellas finds the sweet spot between cadence and language, where rhyme feels unforced and inviting; her poems feel comfortable, gently complex, and warmly nostalgic.-Glenn Lyvers; Prolific Press.Alice in Ruby Slippers is intense, full of depth and beautiful yet haunting imagery in these poems plucked from the aching silences and shadows of darkness and grief to speak their most sincere and vulnerable truths.-Debbie Berk, Founder / Editor, The Stray Branch
