“Calendars of Fire consists of narratives and lyrics, but not conventional story lines or single-pointed lyric ‘meditation,’ as it used to be called. Instead, the poems frame verbal syntheses of the stream of perceptions and emotions that pass uninterruptedly in and out of consciousness. Not just passing perceptions — such as a butterfly ‘with half of its wing shorn off’ or the realization that, for example, people in faraway places are suffering horribly — but also the moral experiences connected to the pain perceived.”— Dana Wilde, Small Press Review

“In the tradition of Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forché, and other poets of witness, Lee Sharkey, in her new collection, Calendars of Fire, confronts human suffering in a voice both gentle and formidable. With eloquent diction and startling shifts in historical time and locale— from Serbia to Iran to the Maine woods and elsewhere—Sharkey compels us to listen and take notice, thereby stretching our consciousness.”— Edythe Haendel Schwartz, Pleiades

“In Calendars of Fire, Lee Sharkey refuses to be that historian or activist, tamed in middle age, no longer pained by injustice. In the title poem, she explains, ‘It was what I wanted, the sobering fire.’ You may wonder how and why fire sobers, but then ask yourself, what do poets do best? They fight forgetting, silence, and isolation by paying attention—really paying attention, so much so that they make others nervous, including themselves.”— Heather Dobbins, The The Poetry Blog