Customer Reviews

Keep and Give Away (South Carolina Poetry Book Prize)

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"Keep and Give Away" is a very pleasant surprise from a new Southern voice. The imagery is luscious and poignant simultaneously. Meyer's paints a rural landscape of growing up and living in and around South Carolina: wintering loons, koi, hats of many goldfinches, the year she banished yellow from her life, roller skating to Maria Callas, red mountains in October, water--both still and rushing, a mother-daughter dance unto death, sweetgum, Spanish moss, fishing on cool mornings, and a man named Blue.

These poems leave you wanting more, which is what an excellent book of poetry must do to succeed.

I've read this book twice, loving it more the second time. I also just finished reading Claudia Emerson's Pulitzer Prize winning "Late Wife." If you liked Emerson's "Late Wife," you'll love Meyers' "Keep and Give Away." Susan Meyers' voice and vision are strong and clear. She may be the next, great poet of the South.

My first introduction to the poetry of Susan Meyers was via a telephone conversation. An "internet" friend in Columbia, SC, called me out here in Cottonwood, CA, and said, "I must share this poet's work with you!" Then she read "A Hat Made of Gold Finches" (I may have the title slightly skewed, as I've loaned my copy of the book to a friend). I ordered the book based on that one poem; I have not been disappointed. Susan Meyers takes the nature that surrounds and creates clean beauty (not always perfectly pretty, just as nature is wont to be) with honest strokes and imaginative genius. A wonderful read, start to finish, over and over again.