Customer Reviews

The Cartographer's Tongue

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   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.

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."

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.