Diorama

by Sandra Marchetti

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 8, 2025

About the author

Sandra Marchetti is the author of Confluence, a debut full-length collection of poetry from Sundress Publications. Eating Dog Press also published an illustrated edition of her essays and poetry, A Detail in the Landscape, and her first volume, The Canopy, won Midwest Writing Center’s Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest. Sandy won Second Prize in Prick of the Spindle’s 2014 Poetry Open and was a finalist for Gulf Coast’s Poetry Prize. Her poetry and prose appears in Blackbird, The Journal, Subtropics, The Hollins Critic, Sugar House Review, Mid-American Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Green Mountains Review, South Dakota Review, Appalachian Heritage, Southwest Review, Phoebe, and elsewhere. Sandy is a teacher and freelance manuscript editor who lives and writes outside of Chicago.

Reviews

[Marianne Mersereau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovers of music and sound will especially delight in Sandra Marchetti’s newest collection of poems, Diorama, as will those who appreciate beautifully drawn images. Marchetti crafts the scenes in these poems much like a set designer would construct a diorama for a movie, allowing the reader to enter fully into the memorable world she creates. One can smell the lilacs in “Dream Only,” feel the loneliness in “Satellite,” taste the sugar in “County Donuts” and be “suffocated by the sweet of it” as she writes in “Breathe.” It is a delight to witness how this literary diorama “assembles itself” and how vividly the scene for the reader “runs true.”

[Jen Finstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! In reading Diorama, I paused often to reread, to smile in delight, and to slow down as I moved through my own life. "Triptych," one of my favorite poems of the collection, tells us that "All things / are migratory—" and for me, it's that tension between the arrested moment and relentless movement that most stays with me. I know that I'll revisit these elegantly crafted poems often, both for their insight and for their joy in language.

[R.G. Ziemer · Rating 5 out of 5]

More great stuff from one of our favorite poets. This collection takes us out of the ball game and into the world of Nature where a feather, a flower, or flowing water invite expansive imaginings in Marchetti's thoughtful language.