The Alchemist's Kitchen
AUTHOR
Susan Rich
A finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award (BookScouter), this sensual collection transforms food, memory, and art into lyrical meditations on connection and loss. From The Alchemist's Kitchen spills an abundance of the world's fruits, herbs and pastries, gestures of hospitality and regard, as Rich writes from a searing awareness of loss and what it means to be spiritually awake (AbeBooks). Drawing on her wide-ranging travels from Sarajevo to Seattle, PEN USA Award winner Susan Rich blends the personal and global with accessible yet deeply complex poems. Praised by Jane Hirshfield for its kaleidoscopic curiosity and encompassing compassion, this White Pine Press collection invites readers to savor language as nourishment, discovering prayer in river valleys and pastry trays alike.
Reviews
"Kaleidoscopic curiosity, powerfully kinesthetic language, and an encompassing compassion range in this abundant collection, in which personal and public realms serve as equal alembics for the distillation of both materia and light."
—Jane Hirshfield
"Rich is a traveler and an observant one at that, with a keen attention to detail and a wonderful ear. These poems are a delight."
—Library Journal
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.