The Cartographer's Tongue [Paperback]

Susan Rich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2000

Qustions of geography, ethnic identity, and the corssing of cultural borders keep company with poetic form in this first collection of work.

“These poems will wound you and haunt you, but the larger knowing they bring is crucial . Susan Rich is a caring citizen of every heartland.”—Naomi Shihab Nye

“Susan Rich gives us a collection of poems...generous in the range and power of their emotion.”—J. M. Coetzee

Editorial Reviews

Review

1 January 1999
1959
All That We Need, 4 A.m.
Atopos: Without Place
The Beggars
Early Morning Weather
Edge Light
The Exact Moment
The Filigree Of The Familiar
Flames
Ghazal For The Woman From Vitez
Green Street Grill: First Date
Haiti
How To Read A Map
In Our Name
In The Language Of Maps
L'oiseau Bleu
La Verbena Cemetery
Last Breath
Leaving Sarajevo
Lessons In The Desert
Lines Written Before Seeing An Ex-lover Who Has Become A Sex Therapist
Lost By Way Of Tchin-tabarden
Love In The Time Of Aids
The Mapparium
Men At Work
Muted Gold
The Myth Of The Perfect Move
Nocturne
Nomadic Life
On Photographing The National Library
Oslobodjenje
The Palmist
The Place
Sarajevo
The Scent Of Gasoline
Science Lessons
Seat Mate
Spring Break
Stories
Take Off
Taoseno
The Toughest Job
Train Travel
Traveling The Map
Tuareg Tea Ceremony
The Wall
Wendy In The '90s
What I Will Take From My Mother
Whatever Happened To The Bodies
The Wheelchair Repairman's Bride Imagines Her First Night
The Woman With A Hole In The Middle Of Her Face
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

About the Author

Susan Rich is a poet and Fulbright Fellow. She teaches at Highline College and lives in Seattle, WA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: White Pine Press (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893996069
• ISBN-13: 978-1893996069
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #887,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Rich grew up in Massachusetts where she spent most of her childhood dreaming of other worlds. As soon as she could, she left home and began wandering. Sarajevo, Cape Town, and Gaza City are some of the places her travels took her. THE CARTOGRAPHER'S TONGUE includes a sequence of poems from her time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa and as an Electoral Supervisor participating in the first national elections in Bosnia. The Cartographer's Tongue won the PEN Award for Poetry as well as the Peace Corps Writers Award. Her second book, CURES INCLUDE TRAVEL, continues with poems of South Africa and Somalia juxtaposed with observations of her home geography of Seattle. Her poems have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Magazine, Poetry International and Witness. She teaches in the Antioch MFA program and at Highline Community College in the Seattle area.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Globe in Motion, December 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cartographer's Tongue (Paperback)

   The Cartographer's Tongue is a fresh and accessible charting of a poet's efforts to be at home in the world, in the body, in a testy humanity. It speaks to the kinds of desires and awakening to the world that the Peace Corps experience often fosters. And Susan Rich's impressive first book brings it all home in such a manner as to participate in a re-mapping of home through a lyric voice of witness that would call us to global responsiveness and responsibility.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Traveling the Worlds of the Political Through the Personal, May 21, 2000

By 

Elizabeth Austen (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Cartographer's Tongue (Paperback)

Rich's finely-crafted poems draw on her experiences as a Peace Corps worker in Niger, West Africa, a human rights educator in Gaza, an electoral monitor in Bosnia, a program coordinator for Amnesty International, and a daughter who has lost both parents. Each poem speaks with the credible, particular voice of one who has been there and seen without blinking or romanticizing. The griefs and atrocities are balanced with erotic poems that reveal an unabated appetite for connection and life. The art of cartography forms the image base of the whole book; even the erotic poems employ the vocabulary of map-making and geometry in surprising, evocative ways. Rich's intelligent and perceptive voice make her a compelling guide to the worlds of "The Cartographer's Tongue."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Travels through poems you'll want to take, January 3, 2005

By 

Kelli (Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cartographer's Tongue (Paperback)

Susan Rich writes for the reader. Her poems are well-crafted, well-thought out and rich with imagery and expression. Her poems are interesting and take you many different places in the world.

Susan Rich has an diverse and intriguing background herself and these poems offer her experience to you. This first collection is one to be read and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves well-written poetry.