Description

Poetry chapbook, paperback. 42 pages. 6″ x 9″. Full color printing. Published by Salt Water Media. Released September 12, 2025.

In Thin as Air, poet Ellie Altman faces with curiosity and confusion the reality of her own aging body and the question of where to find the nourishment she needs as her muscles and bones spin themselves finer and finer with each passing day. Will she eventually become so slender and spare, taking up so little space, that her diaphanous heart scatters in the wind? In each poem, she “deftly darts on surfaces into a disappearing act, // gathering observations without leaving a trace.” But despite her fears, there is joy in the idea of smallness too—the small moments and little things that make each day worth flitting and fluttering through. On the underside of every struggle, every questioning, is the soft, persistent glow of optimism as these poems embrace the late season as the time for rebirth—her slow unraveling and shrinking making way for a metamorphosis.

“In Thin as Air, Ellie Altman dances us through the ways identity shifts: from age to age, person to person, role to role, reflection to inflection. We see the things we know ourselves by transmuted into a new way of understanding the world. The way we dress to face the day, the foods we eat, the places we visit, the things we count carefully and hold close become the threads of a new lyric patchwork that at once solidifies and makes ephemeral the faces the mirror tells us are our own. These poems ask us to reckon with the fact that each us is made of a you and an I. Then it asks us to wrestle what you and I even mean.” —John A. Nieves, editor of The Shore

“Thin as Air captures Ellie Altman’s keen eye for the nuances of an older woman’s daily life. These poems gracefully explore the journey of aging, blending humor with a touch of heartbreak. As the poet so elegantly puts it, ‘the last gasp as I begin to prepare to disappear into thin air.’ Growing older is not for the faint-hearted, but Altman’s poems reveal it as a journey to be embraced, not feared. These quiet moments resonate, leaving a lasting impact on both the narrator and the reader. A quick read, but one that lingers in the mind.” —Constance Brewer, editor of Gyroscope Review

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