A STORY OF HEALING
Poems by Claudia Gary
Time & Other Solvents
Α Narrative Poetry Collection Exploring Love, Loss, Time, Memory, and the Transforming Experience of Womanhood
In Time and Other Solvents, award-winning poet Claudia Gary crafts a deeply reflective and emotionally resonant collection that explores time’s ability to preserve, erode, and transform. Through sonnets, villanelles, and other musical forms of poetry, Gary examines love, grief, aging, memory, family, and the evolving experience of womanhood with clarity, intelligence, and emotional precision.
This collection tells a story that moves through the intimate landscapes of marriage, motherhood, loss, and identity while maintaining an elegance that reflects Gary’s mastery of poetic craft. The poems balance technical sophistication with emotional accessibility, inviting readers into moments that feel both deeply personal and universally recognizable.
Why This Book Stands Out
Unlike much contemporary free verse, Time and Other Solvents demonstrates a rare command of poetic forms while remaining emotionally immediate and modern in voice. Claudia Gary’s métier includes the sonnet, though the collection also incorporates villanelles and other poetic forms that expand the book’s range and texture. Readers will discover:
A sophisticated blend of musical qualities and emotional depth
Sonnets, villanelles, and other traditional poetic forms used in contemporary, conversational language
Themes of love, marriage, motherhood, grief, aging, and memory
Poetry that is intellectually rich while remaining emotionally accessible
A voice that combines lyrical precision with honesty and warmth
Artist Note
“Many of these poems were written over years of reflection on family, memory, loss, love, and the passage of time. Poetic forms offered both challenge and discovery, allowing emotion and meaning to emerge through discipline, rhythm, and craft. I hope these poems will offer light and resonance to readers.”
About the Author
Claudia Gary is the author of two full-length poetry collections, including Humor Me (2006) and Time and Other Solvents (2026). She is also a composer of tonal songs and chamber music. Her poetry is known for its musical qualities, careful craft, emotional intelligence, and exploration of deeply human experiences.
About the book
“Claudia Gary’s exquisite formal techniques and rare candor create a panorama of decades in Time and Other Solvents. This book is a propulsive read—each poem catapults to the next. How does she combine an artistic mother’s electroshock therapy in the 1950’s with a daughter’s response—bulimia—then blend in half a century of current events? From life in New York and L.A. to the Vietnam War as viewed from Paris, Gary guides us back to New York, psychotherapy, and the rescuing practice of art with motherhood. She reveals her answers in poems illuminating an early passion for music that later becomes an adult’s embrace of poetry. Claudia Gary’s dexterity as a poet (she makes those sonnets and villanelles look as poised as an ice-skating routine) allows her honesty to unfold in layer after layer in a sweeping memoir-in-poems that I couldn’t put down.”
—Molly Peacock, author of The Analyst and The Widow’s Crayon Box
Wrong-Way Driver
I. Close Call
Returning home at twilight from the store—
your baby safely strapped into her seat,
the main road not yet widened into four,
then six lanes—in your northbound path you meet
two headlights. Is he crazy? Suicidal?
You swerve onto the shoulder but, for reasons
unknown, you spin around. Your shrill recital
of “No!” explodes the day, the night, the season.
You don’t know how you did it, but you land
across the road, turned in the right direction,
stopped on the southbound shoulder. What calm hand
has helped? The baby slumbers in perfection.
Arriving home alarmed, you phone your parents:
You’re still alive! The day before, you weren’t.
II. Adrenaline Speaks
Here on this shoulder is your place to watch
the wrong-way driver who missed killing you.
Still in his wrong-lane, slow-motion approach,
interior lights all lit, he barrels through
your consciousness again. He can’t be real.
He has the spirit of a broken brick
throwing itself against a porcelain wall.
He’s grabbed your life and given it a kick.
Was this enough? Is this what was required
to make you value each day as a gift,
or will you linger on, stubbornly mired
in everyday sensation till you drift
downstream leaving no more than alibi?
Here on this shoulder is your place to cry.