"The new and selected poems of Gallery of Postcards and Maps introduce
themselves with a warmth that deepens into wisdom. Susan Rich finds
music in everything inside and outside her windows: Leonora Carrington,
Vegetarian Vampires, lovers and ex-lovers, Lorca and Courbet. This book
displays the hallmarks of her oeuvre: her mastery of form; her acuity of
heart and eye. These terrific poems are full of compassion, lyricism and
attention. The selected reflects an ever-present restlessness of spirit,
flesh, and intellect. Glad I got to read it." - Terrance Hayes
"Susan Rich's Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems is
a wondrous and wonderful collection. It gathers poems from her four
volumes of poetry while featuring a stellar selection of new work.
Perceptive and honest, these masterful poems represent a life's journey
full of imagination, desire, and craft, always striving for
transcendence--'knowing yes! is the one chosen thing.' This expansive
collection is both a work of art and a map for what it means to be an
artist." - January Gill O'Neil
"With Susan Rich's new and selected poems, Gallery of Postcards and
Maps, we are given a poet's meditative journey through time, history,
memory, desire. It is 'a collage of wanting, ' a swirling,
hallucinogenic 'quest into the miraculous.' These poems create a deep
conversation with artists, works of art, the world itself as art, and,
above all, with the wild, living planet itself. At one point, Rich
asks--How to write your one blue life? This Gallery of Postcards and
Maps serves as a guidebook and a poetic response to that very question.
Rich is a lighthouse poet--a poet who returns us to the harbor of the
self while also illuminating the wide and mysterious world we live
in." - Brian Turner
"In Gallery of Postcards and Maps, Susan Rich distills the themes
explored in previous collections--travel, human rights, family history,
the color blue. Every idea is a map she chooses to follow and taking her
father's advice, confirms for the reader that: journeys don't happen in
straight lines." - Geraldine Mills
