Late to the Sky is a lyric conversation that spans life-and death-in two families, setting grief alongside beauty in haunting poems rich with lines and phrases to linger over. With skill and compassion, Charles S. Cobean and Josephine LoRe evoke their subjects, very often parents' lives over two very different histories, ranging from Sicily to Hawai'i, from Canada to the United States. In this poetic call-and-response, voices and themes seem to intuitively echo each other in their vivid imagery, embodied energy, and attention to language.
Review :
Late to the Sky is an unusually compelling collaborative manuscript. The poems themselves are hauntingly beautiful, and the interweaving of two accomplished poets' voices is seamless. As LoRe's poem "anyside slant" explains, "you can tell your story anyside slant, a different / version in each pocket of your coat and in the bottom / of your tote alongside poop-bags for walks and a spare mask / a couple Canadian pennies darkened by time, lint, a few grains / of sand." The book proceeds thematically, with alternating poems by LoRe and Cobean focusing on fathers and mothers in the first section, and a wide range of topics in the second section. Cobean's "Accounting" asks, "Now that you are alone, what are your days like? Each day I rise and drink from the chilled flask of a thousand desires. / Each night I toss within the plaid cotton grumble of a thousand second-guesses." LoRe's "among us" begins, "They mingle among us, our dead / in the aftershave of a passerby, the laughter / of that young woman on a bus." Late to the Sky is a collection that will reward repeated readings. Highly recommended.
-John Roche, author of Joe Rides Again (2020) and Tubbables (2024)
These two poets bring you into their families, into the rooms of memory lost-and memories washing back. Longing for what wasn't-and what was. Late to the Sky is the complex emotional inheritance of adult children, orphaned. Replete with similes that paint scenes precisely: "Shoes lined up/like buckshot ducks" (Charles); and unadorned confession, "I wished to be my father's son, to smell of sawdust" (Josephine). These poems sing the questions and forgiveness and beauty in grief-without compromise or cliche.
-Mary Oishi, Albuquerque Poet Laureate (2020-2022), author of Sidewalk Cruiseship (2024)
The collaboration of Charles S. Cobean and Josephine LoRe in Late to the Sky is more like two poets in a room, baring their souls to one another. The first half, an emotional but living testament to their parents, from childhood's passage to the grief of losing their parents to death and dementia. In the second half, the conversation extends to nihilism, God, the universe, and life's joys amid the sorrows. Both Cobean and LoRe work their poetry in such a way that the stories flow in perfect balance.
-Patricia Carrago, curator/editor-in-chief, Brownstone Poets
This isn't simply reflective, but refractive and searching, ardent and pure. LoRe and Cobean's joined paean to memory and joy is a call-and-response across histories overheard, lives pressed like flowers between pages of a vital world. Their entwined voices give release and relief to how we endure.
-Weyman Chan, author of Noise from the Laundry (2008)
