The word “sibilance” refers to pronunciations of the letter “s” including the emission of a hissing or whistling sound. As the title of Sally Van Doren’s fourth collection of poetry, the word alerts readers to the sounds of language in the poems that follow in abecedarian order. Filled with wordplay, Van Doren’s poems vacillate between the extremes of joy and despair, by turns witty and chagrined, punning and reflective. The poems gathered in “Sibilance” aim to clarify their author’s ambivalence concerning living life and writing about it. Her unique investigations teem with distilled images encased in the language of irreverence and awe. A St. Louis native, Sally Van Doren is a prize-winning poet and artist who has taught at the 92nd Street Y and other public and private institutions. She is the author of four collections of poetry, including “Sex at Noon Taxes,” which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. 

“Puzzle”

The rain encroaches 

upon this alert chance 

to distinguish water 

from air. If we jimmy

the window latch, 

the screen comes closer 

to separating us from 

the vector at the end 

of May, the end of a time

when we knew what

to expect from summer.

We hear the rain and we

remember how the blue sky

arrived from wherever it came.