About the Book
With humor and a bent for ironic conclusions, Ellen Azorin offers a poetic perspective on the ordinary yet powerful experiences of everyday life.
She considers the quirks that cause us to be late; muses on the phenomenon of men in nail salons; vents about the frustrations of flying, the challenge of dealing with customer service. She confesses her refusal to accept growing older, shares her passion for music, her awe of magnolias, her feelings about family past and present.
No topic is beyond her thoughtful exploration: sexuality, the subway, God, PIN numbers, the changing seasons, a deceitful fruit salad, an artful shoe salesman, honesty, terror, hope. It’s all here in INSIGHT OUT – the first published collection of these sui generis gems.
Noted poet Hal Sirowitz (former Poet Laureate of Queens and author of “Mother Says”) comments, “she calls it ‘sort-of poetry,’ as if she wasn’t sure what they were – but they’re poems to me.”
Reviews
“Poems so lucid and enjoyable, I actually gave it to my wife to read (and she never reads poetry, if she can avoid it!)”
— Charles Fishman, award-winning poet and poetry editor
“At the same time as it ripples with pep and sizzle and fun, ‘Insight Out’ posits profound, provocative, and lasting insights into the human condition. It’s everything you want a book to be: happy, sad, contemporary, nostalgic, always engaging and, like all worthy expression, deeply personal.”
— Richard Walter, best selling novelist, chairman UCLA
Department of Screenwriting, and internationally renowned lecturer
“Reading Ellen Azorin’s ‘sort-of-poetry’ is like having a conversation with your smartest, wittiest friend. Her wry perceptions are the stuff of our everyday traumas and triumphs, acutely observed and articulately expressed.”
— Barbara Cohen, author, journalist, editor
“Eloquenty simple and simply eloquent, Ellen Azorin’s poetry taps into what we didn’t know we knew. From clever tricks of living (‘Bank Theft’) to cultural loneliness (‘Empty Space’) she opens our awareness.”
— Peg Runnels, artist, sculptor, mask maker and author of Transformative Mask Making workshops and seminars
“The poems touch on universal issues with a unique point of view. The author expresses herself with candor and intensity and I found myself recognizing many situations which I’d never thought about in quite that way.”