Just something she said... - by Diane Smith (Hardcover)

About the Book

Just something she said... is a testament to how a simple statement can unleash an undeniable emotional response. Just a comment shared over coffee can turn into a narrative about relationships and loss, sometimes revealing unexpected truths.

Book Synopsis

Just something she said... is a collection of free-verse poetry based on a woman's thoughts and observations about beginnings, endings, love, and loss. Imagine two friends talking and having coffee in a quiet café, when one says something seemingly insignificant-just a simple thought she's been pondering. These poems are the stories that emerge when that simple thought stirs into something bigger and reveals an unexpected truth.

Diane Smith's collection of thirty poems focusses on a married woman's domestic life to show the essence of humanity shared by both women and men. With conversational verse and an outward unintentionality to slide profound truths to our hearts and souls, her critical eye reveals a full range of thought and emotion on beauty, romance, longing, pain, and love. She creates a tension between her innermost self and outward presentation, calling to mind that marriage and life itself are often performances, dances between fantasy and desolation.

Review Quotes

"Our daily lives are filled with rushing here and there, taking care of things, filling the hours with work-but if we could all just take a few minutes to slow down and read a few poems from "Just Something She Said," by Diane Smith, we could allow ourselves the time to reflect, understand, and believe that we are all connected by our dreams, our hopes, our fears, our loves, our loss, and know that we are not alone in the journey called life. Her beautiful poems speak to the heart in each of us with her vulnerability, her truth, and her talent for expression. This is not a book to be read and set on the bookshelf but one that should be read as a daily ritual."

-Cathie Russell, from Cape May, NJ, author of several novellas, including: The Final Forty, Six Random Numbers, Interview with Maisey McIntyre, Another Interview with Maisey McIntrye, The Adventures of Scruffy Ruffy Dog, Paint the Cloud Black, It's Not a Cloud, and Zapped!

"Diane's poems take us inside human consciousness. She moves inside what it is to be in relationships-with others, with ourselves. Her poems explore what it is to do and undo, to learn, to leave, to lead. She sets the poems in the ordinary places where so much of our life takes place-in cars, in bedrooms at sunrise, in coffee shops with the baristas talking. Her details make the images in her work appear like a movie in front of us. What might you need to hear or what voices might you need to stop listening to? Diane invites us to read, to receive, to reflect."

-Laura Martin, Poet