by Betsy Sholl, Poet Laureate of Maine

Marita O'Neill is a poet of wide embrace and deep feeling, whether she is watching first light enter a cathedral window or working overnight at a homeless shelter. ...There is a keen intelligence and wit at work in these poems, and a lightness of touch that makes them truly luminous Like the medieval workmen she imagines in "Notre Dame at 6 A.M.," O'Neill hears a music so sweet it seems "half-angel, half-human," and she too is inspired by it "to bind intricate patterns" and "make a gate between heaven and earth." For their music, their generous spirit, and their profound humanity, these poems are both beautiful and crucial.

by Martin Steingesser

Marita O'Neill has the poet's gift for detail and the apt simile at the right moment. We make breathtaking leaps with her from image to image, in one instance from the criminal emperor or imperial China to a kiss for her departed mother, and astonishingly, land together, beneficiaries of insight and discovery. A "certain kind of joy/ only a living thing carries in its breast," O'Neill sings to us...and, as she says, "something inside of us flies." These songs carry us across borders, from the streets of her childhood to ancient Rome, from Antigua to hell, invariably alighting in a place we can see, hear with our own heart's ear.