FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Mateo, Calif. – April 29, 2025 – PRLog — In a tribute to the enduring power of poetry, Paloma Press is pleased to announce the posthumous release of Bone Flute: A Woman Speaks, a collection of lyrical poems by Irene Adler. Edited by award-winning poet Angela Narciso Torres, Bone Flute provides a longitudinal poetic record of American life and womanhood echoing Linda Pastan, Mona Van Duyn, and Grace Paley.
“After a career of teaching English for about 15 years, Irene began writing every day. I loved it and was her devoted cheerleader. She often wrote about something she encountered in her life,” recalls Alan Adler, Irene’s husband of 61 years and inventor of the Aerobie flying ring and the Aeropress coffee maker. Irene was also a philanthropist and contributed substantial funds to support cancer research at Stanford University. After Irene passed away in October 2023, Alan endowed a chair at Stanford Medicine in her name. In addition to making a difference in the lives of countless cancer patients, Irene left behind over 2,000 unpublished poems written over 25 years. “Now that we have Bone Flute,” Alan continues, “I’m eager to expose the world to Irene’s wonderful poetry. Royalties will go to the Cancer Research at Stanford University as Irene wished. I intend to do all that can be done to share this book with the world.”
Many hands helped bring Bone Flute to life. Angela Narciso Torres, Irene’s friend of more than 20 years, formed an editorial committee made up of fellow poets Gail Goepfert, Naoko Fujimoto, and Timothy Torres. The book features a Foreword by Nan Cohen, and advance words by Sally Ashton, Robin Ekiss, Peter Kline, and Cintia Santana, all of whom knew Irene. The family and friends of Irene Adler, in association with Paloma Press, are organizing readings to celebrate the book’s release. Bone Flute: A Woman Speaks is available April 29, 2025 through leading online retailers and booksellers. For publicity concerns, please contact Aileen Cassinetto, editor[at]palomapress.org.
ADVANCE WORDS
“Reading Bone Flute, we travel with the poet through the seasons of her life, moving through history, through memory, through geography, and yet with a powerful sense of immediacy. I feel certain that there are poems here… that will survive the way poems do, lodged like a tough plant in a crack in someone’s heart.” —from the foreword by Nan Cohen, author of Unfinished City
“. . . Adler celebrates the small but profound joys that make any life a miracle in spite of suffering, ‘black clouds fringed silver.’” —Sally Ashton, author of Listening to Mars
“Smooth seeming are the waters into which Irene Adler’s words cleanly dive.” —Cintia Santana, author of The Disordered Alphabet
“Irene’s small and sacred meditations reveal what the owls, birds, and beetles already know: life’s ‘wild velocity’ lives in every ‘quill, bone, and feather.’” —Robin Ekiss, author of The Mansion of Happiness
“Bone Flute is a wise testament to the pain and wonder of being human.” —Peter Kline, author of Mirrorforms
