"Sharon Mesmer composes work for an extensive sweep of moments and possibilities. She can be equally trusted behind the wheel of a wide range of frameworks including verse, prose poetry, the short story and the novel. I don't know what is more remarkable about Sharon's writing: her facility with a variety of forms or the scope of her perceptions and the fullness of her sensory perceptions. Her keen vision travels without pause from the palpable contents of observation to dream-like passages which offer a feast of imagery and detail. And, of course, there is Sharon's dead-on humor and skillful crafting to make the everyday fantastical and the illusory seem probable."

"Mesmer puts sex back into poetry. Her work has so much erotic tension that even her surrealistic images make perfect sense. Her great range -- from prose poems to songs that sound like Elvis Costello after a sex change -- make every page come alive."

"This one's long overdue. Sharon Mesmer's poetry is a stream of indomitable spunk, it's tough and lush, polysyllabic and right off the streets of Chicago and New York. She creates a fabulous tissue of language which floats out to inhabit other bodies, opens their mouths and makes them speak. This book is funny and reflects a new kind of poetry consciousness."

"Cunning and provocative, Sharon Mesmer's poems pack a sly panache. In the fugitive roadhouse of Half Angel, Half Lunch the Special of the Day is always devilled eggs."

Sharon Mesmer is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Hawthornden Castle, Scotland, as well as a MacArthur scholarship, given through Brooklyn College. She has recently completed her first novel, FLY.