"'Words,' Paré says, 'are the staple we crave.' In Paré's meticulously crafted poems, what's as poignant as the pictures she creates with her words are the hesitations in the not-so-quiet spaces between the words, between each poem. Each is a constellation of desire, an offering and an uncertainty, shyness, boldness, questioning—the entire dance in the approach to a love interest—not yet lover—but the one we are courting. The writer craves saying the words. The lover craves hearing them."
—Shani Mootoo, author of Polar Vortex and Cane | Fire
“Graceful, sensual, and evocative, Arleen Paré’s latest collection pays fitting homage to the poetry of the late Etel Adnan. Time Out of Time is also very much its own text, moving and beguiling, and expanding in multiple directions as it explores mortality, lesbian identity, and queer poetics.”
—Annick MacAskill, author of Swimming Upwards and Murmurations
“Arleen Paré’s Time Out of Time is a tender, explosive and erotic tribute to the Lebanese poet and visual artist Etel Adnan. With wit and joy at her affinity with Adnan, Paré draws Sapphic meditations of brevity and spareness, meditations full of leaps and pauses that surprise the reader. In declaring how she has become enthralled, even ‘smitten,’ with Adnan as a lesbian artist, Paré takes us to ‘a certain corner on a subconscious street / women and books binding,’ a corner where she faces the small and huge scales of death on our planet, and celebrates the ingenuity of women’s ‘impossible lives, the way we continue to thrive.’”
—Maureen Hynes, author of Sotto Voce
“In her seventh decade, Paré encounters Etel Adnan’s Time. As she reads it, she hears ‘the hush/the pages make.’ Inspired, she gives herself over to Adnan’s sheer attentiveness of ‘writing backwards,’ and chronology, fixed meaning, syntax, and privacy—reconfigure and vivify her recollections and musings. Alert: you will read this book more than once!”
—Betsy Warland, author of Bloodroot—Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss, 2nd edition, 2021
