The Tide Clock

Tanya Contos

ISBN 978-0-977461-09-7

About the Book

In "The Tide Clock and Other Poems" Tanya Contos gives voice to a memorable cast of characters whose lives and loves play out in relation to the sea. From the unidentified woman whose relationship with an unnamed other is chronicled in a series of letter-poems, to those who are literally or figuratively lost at sea or landlocked, all are vividly rendered with elegiac grace.

About the Author

Tanya Contos has lived on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the United States, and in England. She holds a BA in Theatre and Russian Literature from Smith College. As a playwright, she has won the WGBH National Radio Drama Competition, an award from the Artists Foundation, and a commission from the National Heritage Museum. She speaks five languages and has written in several of them. She divides her time between Boston and Cape Ann.

Praise for the Collection

“Tanya Contos is probably better known as a playwright than as a poet, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the poems in her first collection have a dramatist’s clean, clear crispness. And toughness. I especially call your attention to “Wild Berries” (a tender, understated depiction of hard choices) and “Aunt Betty’s Complaint” (the witty dramatist most overtly at work). Unlike my experience with many first books, when I finished reading this one, I wanted to read more.” -- Lloyd Schwartz, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and author of Cairo Traffic and Goodnight, Gracie

“Beyond the pleasure of reading the poems one by one, there is the amazing experience of reading the collection as a whole, the inherent sense of the tide, the rise and fall within it... the rhythm and the chaos; the love and the loss; riches and residue; attraction and abandonment.” -- Rufus Collinson, author of Traveling to You

“In her striking first collection Tanya Contos takes the reader on an inward and outward voyage, from her attachment to the ocean close to which she has lived to the inland places of heart, soul, and habitation that are no less resonant with meaning. These are poems of depth and clarity, with a sharpness of focus that demonstrates an ever-attentive eye and a voice that is as strong as it is immediately recognizable as the poet’s own. There is ripeness too, the fruit of recollecting not only in tranquility but in maturity. A remarkable debut.” -- Peter Anastas, author of At the Cut and Broken Trip and editor of the great Gloucester, Massachusetts poet Charles Olson