Between the Space of Grace and the Gray is the first book of poetry by Dana Larkin Sauers, a former Poet Laureate from Hanover, Pennsylvania. Sauers comes from a world inhabited by beings most of us never meet, but only dream about. She is not an angel, but one could easily mistake her for one. Her irresistible charm shines through on the page as she does in person and it is her privilege to be able to read her verse or hear them read.

One poem and you’ll be up all night. Between the Space of Grace and the Gray it’s as smooth as a glass of root beer, as in the words of his self-revealed signature poem, aptly titled “Root Beer”:

A letter shouldn’t mean so much

but yours was like

a chilled pitcher of root beer

in July

up and over

on the counter

so soapy and sweet

the aftertaste was long.

Dana Larkin Sauers takes life’s sweetest moments and shares them like on every page. She shows us that life is not all pretty dresses and daffodils in spring, but life is about experience, pain, joy, suffering, and making our way through, not always unscathed, but always intact and improved. She is genuine and passionate, intelligent, witty and emotional. Lost innocence is a jewel in her hands. Wisdom is more precious than a pearl and she has it all.

Between the Space of Grace and the Gray it is a self-publishing icon that one reads and rereads and wonders why it was not published by a university press or a small publisher with more weight. That it was published by Palibrio can be seen as a flaw, but in this age of verse overabundance, good poets must sometimes take matters into their own hands. That is what Dana Larkin Sauers has done. She has taken her poetry into her own hands and has produced a book of poems worth devouring over and over again.

Younger readers may not always relate to her images and metaphors, but older readers will love her. This collection of 39 poems makes us feel nostalgic for a time when faith was widely admired, but allows us to enjoy today’s postmodern reality with the knowledge that not everything is black and white. Between the Space of Grace and the Gray he is modest, imaginative and moral. As Michael Hoover says in the Foreword, “By reducing her own life to the smallest part of it, this poet invites us to peel back our own layers of gray to better see the grace within that bursts forth in perpetual song.” . Amen and amen!