Fierce, surreal, ecstatic, and passionately transcendent, the sixty-two beautifully crafted poems in Mary Mackey's Sugar Zone offer depth and complexity while at the same time remaining entirely accessible. Mackey's range is extraordinary. Although over half the poems take as their subject the great cities and tropical rainforest of Brazil, which Mackey knows intimately, her real subject is a journey through a visionary landscape of the human heart which lies somewhere between Saint Theresa's Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros.
“In Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to the interior, somewhere between Saint Theresa’s Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros—but also a place of desperate actuality, even if it is on the other side of the world. Mackey joins other visionary poets of dépaysement—Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. But Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forró, and death. Please read ‘Cold Snap’’ who but Mackey could have written it? Sugar Zone authoritatively creates a language and a culture; but the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home.” --Dennis Nurkse
“Mary Mackey’s new collection Sugar Zone is the culmination of many trips to Brazil. Most poems crackle with lush imagery; others are stark and draw their strength from the wisdom of the saying. These are death haunted poems but full of the vitality of the jungle, the favelas of Rio, the Amazon itself.” --Marge Piercy
“Mackey’s crisp-edged perceptions are set down in these poems with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye.” --Jane Hirshfield
“In Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to the interior, somewhere between Saint Theresa’s Inner Castle and the thicket of Eros—but also a place of desperate actuality, even if it is on the other side of the world. Mackey joins other visionary poets of dépaysement—Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. But Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forró, and death. Please read ‘Cold Snap’’ who but Mackey could have written it? Sugar Zone authoritatively creates a language and a culture; but the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home.” --Dennis Nurkse
“Mary Mackey’s new collection Sugar Zone is the culmination of many trips to Brazil. Most poems crackle with lush imagery; others are stark and draw their strength from the wisdom of the saying. These are death haunted poems but full of the vitality of the jungle, the favelas of Rio, the Amazon itself.” --Marge Piercy
“Mackey’s crisp-edged perceptions are set down in these poems with a sensuous, compassionate, and utterly unflinching eye.” --Jane Hirshfield
