I am generally of two minds about prose poems since they so often lack the virtues I most prize in both media. But Suzanne Underwood Rhodes' new collection combines the evocation and intensity of poetry with the psychological acuity and narrative force of prose. These interlocked personal meditations create a book worth pondering.
-Dana Gioia, former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
It is an ongoing wonder when a writer is able to infuse her prose with such poetic quality and tenderness that each piece becomes a poem in itself. Suzanne Rhodes has this magical facility of seeing to the heart of things.
-Luci Shaw, author, writer in residence, Regent College
Suzanne Rhodes's A Welcome Shore offers us the incandescent landscape of life in the cup of God's hand. Unlike soul-baring efforts, which are often flawed, this collection of vignettes and poetic essays is a soul-setting endeavor, where the soul reveals itself, as Emily Dickinson might say, œaslantâ: a pool in a creative hollow. With language that is as clean and deep as an unpolluted ocean, and with eyes open to the dark passages we must all walk through in search of our own luminous window, Rhodes invites us into a world of signs and wonders, of waxwings, mermaid tears, and seasons mixed with myrrh. No one who follows her will return empty-handed; A Welcome Shore brims with grace.
-Sofia M. Starnes, author of Commerce of Moments and Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh
In A Welcome Shore, poet Suzanne Rhodes confronts the painful realities of loss and shame with bracing honesty. At the same time, the lyrical, evocative meditations that comprise this book suggest that even in the midst of grief, something beautiful and transcendent can wash up on the shore in front of us—if we have the eyes to see it. Treat this book the same way: as a small treasure you bring home to enrich your life.
-Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image and writer in residence, Seattle Pacific University
Did you find this review helpful?