It’s a tradition that began last year, and I hope we repeat every year: making sure we properly acknowledge National Poetry Month by celebrating the work of an amazing contemporary poet! Just like last year (check out our conversation here), I had the extraordinary pleasure of chatting with Susan Rich, show remarkable new collection Blue Atlas is now available. (As always, we are proud to support independent booksellers, and encourage you to pick up your copies via our friends at The Potter’s House.)
I encourage you to enjoy the recorded conversation, below, but a few words of praise, which I’m at once obliged and honored to share.
Throughout the collection we see both the power and purpose of metaphor: the necessity of it, especially for locating or discussing things that otherwise often die in silence. It’s immediately evident we are in the capable hands (and mind, and heart) of an expert, and works like Blue Atlas –aside from the aesthetic joys they induce– serve to increase awareness; no one can read these poems and come away from the experience unchanged. Work this frank and affecting is an empathy generator: I am convinced stories being told equip others to speak — and move the needle, however gradually, in a necessary direction: toward truth, away from silence.
This, to be certain, is deeply personal work, but it also manages what rare art achieves: it fuses the personal and political, with words (and metaphors!!) that render the expression universal in the best sense; these are poems only this poet could write; they are poems everyone can (and should) read. As I prepared for our discussion last night I happened to see the breaking news out of Arizona, and it was a very unnecessary, but unavoidable reminder that work like Susan’s could hardly be more timely, relevant, essential. Please read and share this book.