In this exquisite collection, DeCillis delves into the nature of our attachments through poems that reach out in every direction, exploring everything from Chopin and modern art to sleazy hotels, absinthe, and the sudden yellow bloom of a maple tree. The lush and dense metaphors of life and love that food, color, and music offer, provide us with new ways to negotiate the strings that bind us, intertwining sensibility and sensuality, helping us reconnect with the esthetic potential of our lives, our relationships and the world around us.
~AK Afferez
Her 60+ poems tease the intellect, warm the heart, please the ear, whet the physical and spiritual appetites, and nourish artistic sensibilities with their worldly elegance, lyricism, surprising turnsof-phrase, and evocative narratives.
~Jama
I praise DeCillis for drawing up connects among what may seem fractured, bringing forth hope even when
the speaker appears to have struggled with keeping their past loves close . . .
~Z. G. Tomaszewski
Strings Attached is just such a gem. . . Decillis eases you into poetic forms with such grace that you want to read the pantoum on page 40, for example, over and over, delighting in her twists and turns and what she is teaching so painlessly – and probably without even intending to educate.
~Pamela Grath
To say there's a seedy elegance to these sparkly, crystalline poems is to say they contain everything from broken glass to diamonds, from fleabag motels and cheap pizza and junkies to limos and tuxes, Chopin and Debussy. In fact, Diane DeCillis's grasp of the world's gritty beauty means there isn't a whole lot that isn't in these poems (there's even a recipe for baklava).
~David Kirby, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University and Author of the House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems
Diane DeCillis is the 'Belle of the String Theory Ball,' rooted in Detroit, passionate about her Lebanese grandmother, good food, art, and dreams. These warm philosophical poems explore a cultural and emotional terrain similar to the work of Naomi Shihab Nye. DeCillis ponders Twinkies, absinthe, agoraphobia, the color yellow, insomnia, Cezanne, physics, croissants, and Alfred Hitchcock, all the while unraveling the ball of string that comprises our mortal attachments so she can get to what's real—the sacred nature of love, life, the universe.
~Richard Peabody, Editor of Gargoyle Magazine
Diane DeCillis writes savory poems that make us homesick in multiple ways—for the mysterious people we are connected to, rooms we stayed in too briefly, moments which did or didn't quite click, art and dreaming, and plates on the table. A reader feels more 'anchored to the soil of home' and linked to all time, visionary past, forward horizon. These wonderful poems have their own needles and threads built right into them and the warmth of deepest care.
~Naomi Shihab Nye, Author of Transfer and Fuel