Fused

poetry by Gloria Heffernan

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Fused is a collection of poems that explores the ways in which we are connected—with each other, with our past, with the animal world, and with our planet. The title poem recalls the author's experience of receiving four blood transfusions and thinking about the people—all strangers—with whom she was quite literally “fused.” Poet Gloria Heffernan found herself embracing this theme as a conscious alternative to the polarization that has become so pervasive in our society. The poems in Fused convey a tone of hope and healing. In a time that is so fraught with division, pain, and horror, it is possible that our only real hope is to recognize and appreciate our many connections.

POETRY / General

ISBN: 978-1-962082-65-5 (print; softcover; perfect bound)

LCCN: 2025935061

Released April 15, 2025  |  Copyright 2025

116 pages

Author Biography

Gloria Heffernan’s Exploring Poetry of Presence (Back Porch Productions) won the 2021 CNY Book Award for Nonfiction. She also received the 2022 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Prize. Heffernan is the author of the collections Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica (Kelsay Books) and What the Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, (New York Quarterly Books). Her chapbook Animal Grace was selected for the Keystone Chapbook Series. Her work has appeared in over one hundred publications, including Poetry of Presence II (Grayson Books). Heffernan turned her attention to poetry on a full-time basis after a thirty-year career in higher education administration at numerous institutions, including New York University, Pace University, and Le Moyne College. Her focus was community service, service learning, and community engagement. Currently, she teaches poetry at Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writers Center. For more information: www.gloriaheffernan.wordpress.com

Endorsements

“This is the book I need right now—a poetry collection that both makes me laugh and invites me to be more tender toward all I would rather turn away from. This is a collection that honors both how tiring it is to be a human and how desperately we need and rely on each other. I love that Gloria Heffernan asks, ‘How can I live in the midst of it all and still dare to risk delight?’ Each of these poems dances with the impossible, essential answers.”
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of The Unfolding and host of The Poetic Path

“In this tender collection, hope contends with despair; joy, with suffering. How can we ‘promise to be yes in a world that will often say no’? How can we ‘keep on rowing’ when our arms are so tired? By posing such questions, Heffernan helps us to stay in the boat and hold on to the oars.”
—Phyllis Cole-Dai, co-editor, Poetry of Presence, volumes I and II

“In the face of this world’s increasingly difficult realities, Gloria Heffernan claims early in Fused, ‘I am learning to hope that hope is a decision . . . the thing with sturdy shoes that walks out into the elements,’ and thus the reader begins a journey alongside her through loss and discovery, despair and joy. When even ‘the world is tired . . . hobbling,’ we step from season to season fused to what is most elemental—memory, experience, love. This collection is both a reckoning and a balm.”
—Linda Tomol Pennisi, author of The Burning Boat

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