"In poet Dianne Borsenik's new book Flight of Honey, the sounds of music, homages to visual art, maps of family geography, interactions with nature, and married life and related concerns, combine in a poetry collection that is as satisfying, fluid, and sticky as the titular sweetener. If ever a writer deserved to be Poet Laureate of Ohio, it would be Dianne Borsenik."
-Gregg Shapiro, author of Refrain in Light (Souvenir Spoon Press, 2023)
"Borsenik's new collection of poems is a lyrical journey through a year of experiences that mirror the changing seasons. In free verse poems, haiku, and haibun, Borsenik explores the tensions of life's highs and lows. One moment we can relish a "golden weekend" with days like honey, "richly aureate," and the next, we hunker down, struggle amid the booms and busts of history. Through it all, there is plenty of music, a soundtrack in language and in images- from a grandfather strumming a dulcimer somewhere in a West Virginia hollow to Aretha Franklin belting out her classic "Respect," to the music of the universe, "one giant composition plucked out / on a cosmic guitar."
-Chuck Salmons, author of Patch Job (Night Ballet Press, 2017) and Stargazer Suite (11thour Press, 2016)
"In this sweet collection, spiked with the poet's desire to live longer than her mother did ("genetic advantage/is not in my charts,") we have zany moments where Jesus roams the Wal-mart parking lot, sixties lyrics zing, and birds and feral cats screech in Midwest intersections. But the poems revel also in serious seasons of honey tasting, including the latter days, "the best of all," as Borsenik fills her hive with finely realized echo puns, ekphrasis, haiku, haibun, and many free-verse form explorations. We usually say this about fiction, but I have to say about this book of poems: I couldn't put it down."
-Diane Kendig, author of Woman With a Fan: On Maria Blanchard (Shanti Arts, 2021)
"For something so sweet, honey has a surprising depth of flavor, secret floral notes buried under waves of fructose and glucose. Similarly, the poetry of Dianne Borsenik will surprise you if you let it. There is joy and tranquility here that sometimes bubbles with mad effervescence, but also darker currents as she explores rustbelt landscapes, the Appalachian diaspora, the daughter-of-a-daughter-inlaw's blues, and her own mortality. Like the "flight of honey" in her title poem, she follows the seasons, tasting deep and mixing poetic forms t