Bücher von Rikki Santer

"For those who may think poetry is obtuse and boring, In Pearl Broth: Poems New & Selected will shake that notion free. Rikki Santer's poems are chock-full of vibrant language that evokes responses in both the busy mind and the quiet heart of the reader: piffling questions multiply like maggots . . . the mall tilts on its axis . . .we like handcuffing matters down . . . secret bag of caramels in a lingerie drawer . . . little swords of wheat . . . fuzzy-hearted commas . . . a marimba of alchemy . . . canape¿s of flummery . . . my museum of desperate clues. These poems stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. So moved by "A Swift and Fatal Plunge", I spent an evening reading about the tragic event that inspired Santer's stunning narrative. The notes I kept while reading In Pearl Broth will surely serve to inspire my own poem-making."-Susan F. Glassmeyer, Invisible Fish; 2018 Ohio Poet of the Year

Rikki Santer's dazzling How to Board a Moving Ship makes the familiar brilliantly strange again. Neighbors are bears in "golden vanilla coats," garden gnomes wander, adolescence is electric and ever present, headlines promise life on other planets, and the cruel pageantry of our government is loud as a carnival. Between the lights and neighborhoods and catwalks, loss lives here, too, as when Santer describes her mother: "the palindrome of my mother's / chest scars, targets where her breasts used to be." Santer is both a magician and our Virgil, guiding us through each vignette, whether it's a vision from childhood - "memories wash / lean in the tides-red rover, red rover" - or "the politics of textile" and the splendor and harm of fashion. Santer invites us to marvel and reminds us that even in an unpredictable and painful world, there is still so much wonder ready for an audience.-Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire.