SLEEPWALKER – Poetry Chapbook
Published by Finishing Line Press
Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s poems speak with intense fierceness to hard-earned compassion and painful healing after her eldest son’s suicide. Trying to make sense of tragedy, she unearths the heartbreak of motherhood and loss, revealing tender, resilient love in poems that embrace who her son was and what he will never be. Those who have suffered such a loss will know they are not alone.
“Only a poet as brave as Linda Sienkiewicz can invert grief’s long shadow into a beam that shines between worlds, illuminating the faces and voices of the lost. Reading Sleepwalker, we’re nudged awake from the dream and reminded: hold close those you love, cherish the life you’re in. By their light, these poems salvage and reclaim the heart and its losses.”
~Robert Fanning, author of The Seed Thieves
“Sleepwalker is a beautifully lyrical, heart-wrenching exploration of grief at the loss of a son by suicide, and a voyage through memory, dreams, and waking reflections. Derek piloting a Navy Blackhawk over Afghanistan, Derek in a family portrait, Derek writing a poem titled “Moon and No Stars,” Derek reappearing after ten years in the grave. This is a book not only for those who grieve, but also for those fascinated by the imaginative resilience that poetry can produce.” ~ John Roche, Joe Poems: The Continuing Saga of Joe the Poet
“Along with heartbreak…there is the endless return and re-examination, and there is no answer, no reply. There is only continuation…. Love is an ache. In these marvelous poems, the reader aches with her.” – Rick Bailey, And Now This Full Review
“Sleepwalker visited and has left me different.” – Hiram Larew, Patchy Ways
“I am so very grateful that you somehow created what for so many of us is a gift of courage and understanding and inexplicable comfort. My admiration and gratitude are endless.” – Jack Ridl, Saint Peter and the Goldfinch
“So full of love, so full of loss. Oh, my heart was so open to hers as I read it. The stakes are so high in this book, and she meets them with such unflinching honesty.” – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, All the Honey
“These poems contain an honesty so profound it will resonate through every heart. Our lives, our loves, and our losses are creatively rendered in Linda’s deliberate and thoughtful style. This is what poetry does. It teaches as it reflects truth. It delivers us to and from pain. It reminds us we are not alone in our grief. This is why we have poetry, and why we need poets.” – Amazon Reviewer
“Sleepwalker left me breathless. Her images are so heartbreakingly vivid that I had to pause after most of them, just to take them all in. A brave, unflinching portrait of motherhood and loss that when you finish, I guarantee you will hug close to your heart.” – Kim Fairley, Swimming for my Life
Paperback ISBN 979-8-88838-223-3 | 34 pages | $15.99 | Buy Now for signed copy:
Also available from Finishing Line Press | Amazon | Bookshop.org
Linda on The Book I Never Wanted to Write: Sleepwalker
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SECURITY – Poetry Chapbook
Published by March Street Press
“Linda K. Sienkiewicz takes on the grittier human topics: children gone to war or astray, our violent selves, the sometimes “dearth of noble natures” and intrepidly rearranges the disaligned, awakening us with poetry that sings out and takes no prisoners.” –Dorianne Laux. What We Carry, Guggenheim Fellowship Award Recipient
“In Security, Linda brings us her hard-edged vision of a domestic life in which miracles pale in comparison to the solidity and substance of real people. She blesses the world- our world- with her attention to our hopes and fears: we know these people, struggling for dignity and meaning, worrying about friends and children and marriage and money, looking for sufficient beauty to go on. These poems find that beauty again and again and offer it to us as the daily bread of poetry.” –Richard Hoffman, Interference and Other Stories, Massachusetts Cultural Fellowship Recipient
Paperback ISBN 978-1596611337 | 39 pages | $9.00 – Limited copies available | Buy Now for signed copy:
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POSTCARD OF A NAKED MAN – Poetry Chapbook
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Published by March Street Press
“There’s a wonderfully, eerie, almost comical edge in this wry, self-assured collection. Linda Sienkiewicz casts a clear eye on personal devastations, dangers and desire. Her refusal to yield and her deft way with words give us poems that tell us to picture it- and survive.” — Terry Blackhawk, Escape Artist, winner of 2001 John Cardi Poetry Prize
“The Monty Python call, ‘And now for something completely different,’ serves well as an introduction to these poems by Linda K. Sienkiewicz. Her book opens with a tribute poem to American surrealist Russell Edson, then suddenly moves on to a real Woolworth’s lunch counter or the back seats of the Willow Theatre. The book moves with the intuitive quickness of dance and turns from Eros to sadness to Joy. ‘The sun becomes an eye/ the street: a snake I fear will swallow me.’ Her work is alive with surprise and with dreams made real.” –Larry Smith, Milldust and Roses: Memoirs
Paperback ISBN 978-1882983940 | 26 pages. | $9.00 – Limited copies available | Buy Now for signed copy:
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DEAR JIM – Poetry Chapbook
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Published as a Finalist in a chapbook competition, by Main Street Rag.
Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s poems are at the heart of every place: in the wilderness of dreams, in the celebration of relationships, in love and in trouble. She has a delightful way of fusing fact & imagination in solid accomplishment. Her insight becomes our insight. Linda is chock full of feminine power.” –Stellasue Lee, Ph.D., Crossing the Double Yellow Line
DEAR JIM
Thirty years is a long time, Morrison-
my mantra, my shaman, my sweet
erotic nihilist. It’s too weird to think
you’d show up panting
at my back door, and I’m no longer
the lone, braless freak in a high
school full of fresh-faced cornhuskers,
no more the sweet sixteen leather-whip
whose kohl-lined, bloodshot eyes saw your face
in every Rorschach blot, who believed
she alone could light your fire…
Interview with Linda on Jim Morrison and Dear Jim on Celebrities in Disgrace
Paperback ISBN 1-930907-34-6 | 42 pages | $7.00 | Out of Print – Limited copies available | Buy Now for signed copy:
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IN THE CURVE OF SPACE AND TIME – Poetry Chapbook winner
Poetry chapbook titled “In the Curve of Space and Time” was published within The Heartlands Today Urban Midwest Issue as the First Place winning manuscript in their chapbook competition. The Heartlands Today, no longer in print, was a publication of the Firelands Writing Center of Firelands College of Bowling Green State University in Huron, Ohio.
ISSN 1-66-6176 | 11 pages | Out of Print