Shara McCallum, author of “Madwoman”

It’s difficult to condense a life into poems, but Nusbaum’s Alive in this Place achieves just that, offering graceful, moving meditations on love, loss, aging, and acceptance of change. “Alive” to our world, Nusbaum transforms the ordinary—so birch leaves “shiver like confetti against the summer sky.” Every poem beautifully evokes “this place” we inhabit, this earthly “Kingdom of Heaven/where God lives.”


Jane Yolen, author of Owl Moon & The Devil’s Arithmetic

When a writer makes the ordinary extraordinary, we call her a poet. When she notices “the generosity of maples” we write that down because of its engaging specificity. But when she goes beyond the observed and into the oratorio of loss--widowhood, the older woman’s plaint, I nod and bring my own memories forward, knowing I have to read on to the end of her book of poems, where the old families live—the ones we only remember in the blurred edges of photographs. And then a single comment hits me hard. “the need to put everything right. . .” And that’s when I know I have found a book of poems I shall return to again—for observations and solace, comfort, and promise, while savoring as her husband did, “the departing light”