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A beautiful, poetic, ethereal read, The Shoemaker is the story of a great-grandfather and great-grandson connected by blood and by their passion for shoes. At first Manny has little time for his ancestors, but as his great-grandfather’s life draws magically closer, at times aided by benevolent apparitions, he begins to glimpse the answers to the questions about the meaning of life that have been plaguing him. Shoes play an important and enlightening role throughout the story and deliver so many gems I had to stop and savor, my favorite being that with a good pair of shoes, you can go anywhere and achieve anything. Masterfully told, the further you read, the tighter the threads the author has so expertly woven come together, leaving you, like Manny, with a renewed perspective of the meaning of family, home, and what to do with our precious time on this earth.
—HILARY HAUCK, author of From Ashes to Song and The Things We’ll Never Have
In writer Mark Saba’s poetry collection from Kelsay Books, Flowers in the Dark, rich evocative poems depict landscapes of the heart, home, and time travels. A keen observer who respects the Earth, Saba has crossed life’s shadows and underscores what matters. He muses on his roots in the Allegheny foothills of Pittsburgh, traditions of grandparents from the Old World, and the plight of today’s immigrants. Weaving in exquisite metaphors and vivid scenes that appeal to all the senses, Saba recalls the power of pulsating clouds, blush peonies on a home altar, and creaking trees. Many thought-provoking poems end on notes of upbeat resignation. Lessons learned during a lifelong storm, he now values the essence of words, an object’s roots. In this timeless book, Saba brilliantly captures quotidian happenings that have evolved into treasured milestones.
—AMY BARONE, poet and author of Defying Extinction and We Became Summer
A Luke of All Ages follows the life of the main character, Luke, who grew up in Catholic, working Pittsburgh and finds himself wondering about his strange perspective on life in scenes that weave back and forth from childhood through adulthood. Though he endures many of the pivotal events that might define anyone's life as he grows older, he somehow feels ageless inside. This tension between what the world sees, and what he is, fuels a constant source of struggle for him and his relationships with others.
Fire and Ice revolves around two main characters: a man (Tom) who was raised in a traditional Catholic house and attended a Catholic school , and a woman (Anne) who was raised without the influence of any organized religion, and was home-schooled. Tom becomes less engaged in following the Catholic tradition as he grows older, while Anne becomes curious about religion in general and is eager to learn more about it. Their paths cross and they become intimate, each offering to the other a world view they had been missing. Apocalyptic weather events add tension to the story, testing both characters' resolve in adapting to a changing world.
In Ghost Tracks: Stories of Pittsburgh Past, Mark Saba writes about a Pittsburgh that is neither material, nor historical, but a place of memory. Beginning his collection with a quote from Tolstoy, “Everything is, everything exists, only because I love” he sketches in “the everything” with stories about professors, workmen, children and nuns told in an amazing range of voices. Some of the narrators relate events as they are occurring and some talk about what happened after their deaths. In the last story in the book, a father who had died when his son was three wonders what his son would have been like if had been a part of his growing up. The father says that the only consolation he can find is that his son uses “his uncommon perspective to bring light to others who may have found themselves in the same circumstance.’”Mark Saba has an uncommon perspective, and he has used it to connect us to characters that exist for us because of his expert telling of their stories.
—CHRIS BULLARD, Fear
Mark Saba’s Calling the Names is anchored by lines with artfully knotted phrases that try to hold life, even if ultimately nothing but memory endures. The work is framed by consistent emphasis on the life's brevity, “a stammering heart, aware that it contains a finite number of beats.” Even in travel, Saba is alert to “all the places that didn’t record us.” Creating a lyrical kaleidoscope shifting with the rhythm of breathing and beating of the heart, Saba employs metaphor to form complex transformations. Saba is not afraid to examine “the sting of life” but finds hard won joy even though he knows that he will swing from “love to solitude again.” In an attempt to record his life in time, Saba places himself in “the depths of unknowable oceans, the runoff of billions of emptied souls.” This is an important collection, and a necessary one, because Saba ties disparate experiences together with his overarching vision in moving and compassionate poems that create the bridge between life and death we all will cross.
—VIVIAN SHIPLEY is the Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor and author of Perennial and The Poet.
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Mark Saba’s poems move deftly and imaginatively from his Pittsburgh past to more universal themes...These poems remind us of why we are here, even as they celebrate the uncertainty of being.
—ANNIE DILLARD
There are poets who exercise admirable restraint, yet somehow manage to squeeze in a lot of images between the lines. Former Pittsburgher Mark Saba falls into this category. His language is rich and imagistic, but nuanced; tender, yet suspicious of false sentiment. A few poems touch on Pittsburgh in this collection, but most are about other states of mind and being. Painting a Disappearing Canvas is sublimity guaranteed to linger.
—PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE
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