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Blue Atlas Susan Rich

Blue Atlas By Susan Rich

Blue Atlas by Susan Rich


$12.85
Condition - Very Good
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Summary

Blue Atlas, the sixth book of poems from award-winning poet Susan Rich, is her most original work to date.

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Blue Atlas Summary

Blue Atlas by Susan Rich

Blue Atlasis a lyrical abortion narrative unlikeany other. This one-of-a-kind collection follows a Jewish woman and her ghosts as they travel from West Africa to Europe and, finally, to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. The speaker searches repeatedly for a new outcome, seeking answers in a myriad of mediums such as an online questionnaire, a freshman composition essay, and a curriculum vitae. The raw, often far from idyllic experience of a global love affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy is examined and meditated upon through a surreal prism. The Blue Atlas, a genus of the common cedar tree first found in the High Atlas of Morocco and known for its beauty and resilience, becomes a metaphor for the hardship and power of a fully engaged life.

Blue Atlas Reviews

The remarkable poems ofBlue Atlaschart an expansive life which spins around an epicenter of loss, but loss is too tame a word, really, for what this speaker bears. I am a woman swollen with the history of my dead, Rich writes, a body awash in stories. She describes an imperiled childhood and a young adulthood that culminates in a coerced midterm abortion, which stays suspended in resin / like a tiny scorpion, / transforming anger into amber.Blue Atlas exquisitely performs the way traumathe utter loss of self-determination, of choicecan turn a life to seawater, to drift, to somehow, the might still be mapping constellations of in-between, suspended between deciding and undeciding, from a space outside of the circumference of longing, where poetry lives.Diane Seuss, author offrank: sonnets

Plaintive and ferocious by turns, the voice in Susan Richs poems keeps asking the same question: Does anyone escape her own story? The answer, of course, is no, especially when the effects of an early loss keep troubling the later decades of a life, exerting measures of devastation, regret, and nostalgia.Blue Atlas is Richs sixth book of poems, and it marks an apotheosisan apotheosis that, as the title suggests, is suffused with amplitude and intimacy, woundedness and wonder. Rich has arrived at a place of wisdom in her work, enthralled by still another essential question: what is this heaviness // embedded in our good luck / this sharp, bronzed hinge?Rick Barot, author ofMoving the Bones

About Susan Rich

Susan Rich is the author of eight books, including Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems, as well as Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemists Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer's Tongue: Poems of the World. Her poetry has earned her awards from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement (London). Individual poems appear in the Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, and Poetry Ireland, among other places. Susan is co-editor with Kelli Russell Agodon of Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems. She teaches at Highline College and directs Poets on the Coast: A Writing Retreat for Women from Seattle. Susan currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Additional information

CIN1636281265VG
9781636281261
1636281265
Blue Atlas by Susan Rich
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Red Hen Press
2024-05-16
100
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Blue Atlas