Silently, Shadows are Sweeping

Courageous, sorrowful, fleeting, peace-seeking: these poems reach into life-in-death, and death-in-life. Gretel Ehrlich, author, "Facing the Wave"

Carolyn Surrick has written a searing, deeply moving tone-portrait of love, loss, finality and forgiveness. Her description of her father’s and step-mother’s final days, and her own conflicting responses to their fates, is fearless and unflinching — a poetic smorgasbord rich with the bittersweet truths intrinsic to embracing deeply flawed loved ones. Her words illustrate how, for better, for worse, in sickness, in health, and especially before, during and after death, the commitment to clear-eyed love is above all an act of courage. I feel grateful she wrote this. I feel more human for having read it. Tinker Lindsay, author, “The First Rule of Ten”

Carolyn Surrick lives outside Annapolis, Maryland in a house made from a barn with her daughter, their beloved extended family, and two dogs. She received a BA in music from the University of California, Santa Cruz and an MA in musicology from George Washington University. Her instrument is the viola da gamba and she performs, tours, and records with Ensemble Galilei. Her first book of poetry, Between War and Here, published in 2011, grew out of her work with wounded warriors, a part of her performing life that is very near and dear to her heart.