Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

A Welcome Shore Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

From the foreword: "It is an ongoing wonder when a writer is able to infuse her prose with such poetic quality and tenderness that each piece becomes a poem in itself. Suzanne Rhodes has this magical facility of seeing to the heart of things . . . To retain the precision of the moment, one has to be there to experience it. Suzanne is a friend who takes my hand and says "Look!" or "Listen!" or just "Stay here with me while the meaning of this beauty unfolds." It's in that particularity and specificity of Rhodes' seeing and speaking that a comparison with Mary Oliver's writing becomes consistent in my mind. Both have eyes wide open for beauty and the significance of earthy things like shorelines and sedges, shells and what Suzanne calls "the slow simmer of time." Her subjects include things like the miracle of the human hand, the tang of a marinade, how improvisational prayer is, a horse-shoe crab, or the weight of wetness on a morning tent. And much, much more-each sample a small slice of a life lived well, in which we are invited to join, powerfully moved, weeping or rejoicing with the writer." -Luci Shaw