If Only is both ode and elegy–to the Maine island where Weslea Sidon has lived for so long; to the beloved with whom she shared this life; to the animals, plants, and people that constitute he community. The brevity and simple language of these poems are the source of their emotional power. The world they describe–yard sales, bird feeders, school plays, lonely rooms–accure into a portrait of place that is both specific and universal. Always they remind us of Sidon’s deep and unsentimental sympathy with imperfection, her eagerness to find beauty in the awkward and the overlooked. These poems celebrate the ambiguities of time, the push-pull links among our inner life, our daily world, the unknown. As Sidon reminds us, “There is nowhere / you can go now, without going through.” 

– Dawn Potter, Maine Poet Laureate, author of Calendar

 Weslea Sidon’s poems have appeared in Confrontations, Salonika, Gulf Stream Magazine, the New York Times Metropolitan Diary, Xanadu, Still On the Island, and Paumanok, among other journals and anthologies. She has been Arts Editor of The Women’s Record, a regular columnist for Face Magazine and The Squash, and has reviewed music and books for The Bar Harbor Times, the Mount Desert Islander, Off the Coast, and High Performance Magazine. She is a recipient of a Martin Dibner Fellowship in Poetry and a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation.