New York City poet, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal

In Facing Home and Beyond, Ruth Sabath Rosenthal reaches back into the past relating important history, while mindful of the significance of the present. Her poems covers a multitude of subjects, each given special attention. I hope you will be, as I was, filled and completely satisfied with Ruth’s storm of images. — Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, former Suffolk County Poet Laureate

Ruth Sabath Rosenthal’s first book of poems, Facing Home and Beyond, delves deep into the often complicated facets of relationships between husbands and wives, as well as parents and children, which can produce paradoxical experiences of heartache and pleasure. Although Rosenthal’s poems appear highly personal, they also contain universal truths, such as, feelings of pain and nostalgia will often be felt after a loved one is no longer a present figure in one’s life. It is these feelings that anchor her poems into a subject matter that allows for healing and renewal after loss is experienced within relation-ship. — Rachel L. Kaminsky, graduate of St. Francis College and Fordham University’s Master of Arts in English with a writing concentration Program

In Ruth’s Sabath Rosenthal’s poetry, life is often a riddle or at least a source of puzzlement and paradox. Ruth’s keen perceptions help us better comprehend ourselves. We come to see life in a different light — enlightenment, that allows us to find and face our own home and go beyond — David B. Axelrod, Laureate and Fulbright Poet

As the title suggests, the poetry in Facing Home is frank and emotionally charged. Poems we can relate to, facing memories of the home we grew up in, as well as the homes that we as adults have made, broken, and re-formed. Rosenthal’s accessible writing style balances humor, anger, and compassion. She employs enough specific details from her own life to make the memories feel real, while staying focused on universal themes that will resonate with many readers. Some of her strongest work is about the complex feelings involved in caring for elderly parents who were emotionally unavailable to her as a child. — Jendi Reiter, Vice President, WinningWriters.com

It’s with passion and humor that Ruth Sabath Rosenthal dives into the complexities of family life in her shining chapbook Facing Home. Forthright and fearless, vulnerable and tender, each poem illuminates an emotional moment between human beings. There is purity of purpose and daring here. Rosenthal’s boldness, insight, & lived, earned wisdom embrace her readers with each line. — Molly Peacock

Facing Home and Beyond, by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, gives us well crafted poems that focus on the family in heightened stages of life. The poems are emotionally charged & complex (“Riding Past the Museum of Natural History & Seeing the Steps”) and witty (“For Want of Red”) and sometimes dark (“Every Sunday”). With such arresting titles as (“I Ate My Mother’s Hair” and “Contemplating Caring for a Porcupine”) Ruth vividly presents the human experience with sensibility and humor. — Patti Tana

Facing Home and Beyond is no sentimental or nostalgic gesture for Ruth Sabath Rosenthal, but rather a tough-minded encounter with the subtle cruelties, the blind-spots, and the betrayals that all who have marked time within families will recognize. Though disappointment and loss are inherent in the terrain, any collection in which the tape of a last phone message is preserved in a “velvet-lined box” speaks to tenderness as a counterweight to mortality. It’s that ability to balance—on taut lines, juggling a wry (and often pun-loving) wit with moral courage—that makes these poems triumphs of form and candor. — Jeanne Marie Beaumont
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Facing Home is no sentimental or nostalgic gesture of Ruth’s, but rather a tough-minded encounter with the subtle cruelties, blind- spots and betrayals that all who have marked time within families will recognize. Though disappointment and loss are inherent in the terrain, in which the cassette tape of a last phone message is preserved in a “velvet-lined box,” it speaks to tenderness as a counterweight to mortality. It’s the ability to balance on taut lines, juggling a wry and often pun-loving wit with moral courage, that makes these poems triumphs of form and candor. size 5 ½” x 8” - 36 pages - $14.00

little, but by no means small is filled with short poems, including some haiku, portraying all sorts of beings and objects, animate and inanimate in nature. Although each verse is short, it nonetheless speaks volumes, and that, often done with humor, irony and/or tenderness. The poems address the realities, foibles and conundrums of the living and the dying—and mother Nature, her great trees & flowers, sand, sea and sky. Her quirky creatures, including a dog, butterflies, gulls, snake, monkeys, big cats — all here, captured in miniature, shown in a whole new light. Poems easily accessible to the reader. size 6” x 9” - 90 pages - $11.00

Facing Home and beyond is bursting with life, teeming with vibrant portraits of grandparent, mother, father, sister, aunt, husband, red-clad women and more. Poems that skillfully focus on birth, marriage sex, dreams, aging and death, while others, often done with rich humor reference food, animals (including dogs, a parrot, big cats, monkeys, a porcupine), Whitman and Yeats, and more... Here is poetry throbbing with vividly presented human experience and imagery. size 6” x 9” - 150 pages - $16.00

Food: Nature vs Nurture is chock-full of all sorts of earthly beings vying for their fair share of whatever it is they believe will sustain them. Each poem speaks to the human and animal condition in their natural and unnatural state of being. Man and beast are seen here, sometimes acting odd and comical, and other times, even behaving brutally in their pursuit of sustenance — nutritional, emotional and spiritual. And, in spite of the diversity of personalities, the creatures somehow manage to coexist in perfect harmony within these pages. size 6” x9” - 56 pages - $7.95

Gone, but Not Easily Forgotten is exactly what the poems in this book are all about. The loved and missed: people, pets, possessions, the joy they brought and the joyful memories they left, to be savored anywhere, anytime. Then there’s the not-so-loved — whatever and who-ever would best be forgotten, yet is not, by a long-shot. Also, there’s the not-so-easily-for-gotten. Memory of them colors each day — sometimes the color is bright, and other times, various shades of gray. size 6 x 9 - 48 pages - $7.00