Review “The surprising thing is being here.” Thus opens Sally Zakariya’s Personal Astronomy, a poetic journey into the microcosm of love and relationship juxtaposed against the backdrop of the universe in poems that are as lucid and ordered as the constellations they invoke. Zakariya’s verse rings with music and shines with imagery in a book that is as beautiful as the night sky.Mike Maggio, author of Garden of Rain and Oranges from Palestine  Sally Zakariya has the gifts of succinct eloquence and wise observation. Her poems express a stargazer’s wonderment, doubt and acceptance of the extraordinary grounded in an ordinary life. The chance union of opposites; the weight of dark matter that everywhere allows for a slint of light. Her subject matter demonstrates an ongoing belief in the value of happenstance. Personal Astronomy is a subtly powerful collection that you will read afresh each time for its own sparks of light.Jennifer M. Pierson About the Author Sally Zakariya's Pushcart Prize-nominated poems have appeared in some 70 print and online journals. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011), and the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table (2015). Zakariya blogs at