"Silano's posthumous eighth collection, Terminal Surreal, incorporates science and nature imagery in a mischievous and moving verse account of her final years with ALS. . . . Silano acknowledges her decline and ponders all she'll miss, yet manages to find the humor and ridiculousness in her situation. Her winsome philosophical work is a gift."-- "Shelf Awareness, starred reivew"

"The sheer abundance of the world in Terminal Surreal is striking. I can't think of a book since Neruda's odes that's as rich in particulars or as broad in range. From Keats to a clam that can live a hundred sixty years, from clean cupboards to constellations, poem after poem explodes with imagination and discovery. Martha Silano's distinctive voice--energetic, funny, inquisitive, full of delight--animates her deft explorations of the past, the present, and what's to come. Terminal Surreal is exuberant, moving, and insightful." -- "Don Bogen, author of "Immediate Song""

"What brilliance and what exuberance characterize Terminal Surreal, Martha Silano's seventh book of poems. Alea iacta est: within the first few pages, the poet reveals her diagnosis of ALS. For the rest of the book she struggles with that bitter sentence, it is true, but even more, she hurls herself headlong into her love affair with the world. 'Wasn't there always awe, punctuated / with grief?' she asks for instance in 'It's Benzene, It's Ash, It's Lead.'

Weren't we always elegies
with spleens? But today all I care about
is the Island Marble Butterfly making
a comeback. Coming back in all its green-
and-white-mottled glory.

This is a learned book (how much she knows about science!) and a funny book. But most of all, it is a brave book. 'Always Wake Up Happy, ' one poem is titled: 'because, you know, I could've died while I lay me down.' So could we all. But dying, Martha Silano superbly shows us living."-- "Ann Fisher-Wirth, author of "Paradise Is Jagged" and coeditor of "Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology""

"There has never been a life force quite like the life force that is Martha Silano, 'a feisty feckful gal / who fancied words like gherkin / and scintillate, ' and no poetry like the poetry that springs from that life force. Live-wire lines flood with lifeblood. Images emerge from a voracious mind, with a breathless studiousness, and a witnessed understanding of ecology, the cosmos, and the body. Hers is the poetics of being unabashedly in love with life. In Terminal Surreal, Silano, having received a terminal diagnosis, steps into an astonishingly forthright, exuberant investigation of mortality, its beauty, and its price. I have no doubt this voice, these poems, will live forever."-- "Diane Seuss, author of "Modern Poetry" and "frank: sonnets""

"Exuberant stoicism. Sober slapstick. I've always loved poetry that holds up the indubitable crap of reality then blasts it with factual miraculousness. In these world-embracing poems, Martha Silano turns her terminal ALS diagnosis into a vessel for cooking fear and bitterness into irony and delight. . . . Her energetic, jam-packed lines buzz with the music and beauty of mushrooms and hummingbirds, paddleboards and Xanax. Her incredible register ranges from goofy to grim, from scientific to awestruck. We're all terminal, right? But Silano's poems seize the moments."