March 15, 2024
Sullivan's highly accessible debut collection can be read as a loosely assembled memoir in verse with intriguing detours. Readers meet the poet as a child in an evangelical household, her parents "medical missionaries." Avidly focused on nature, from forest to field, birds to horses, Sullivan, "slow to root," evokes contrasting scenes of "girldom" in the Central African Republic and rural Ohio. She writes of lemons and mangoes, her mother, her sisters, and formative moments. She presents a series of poems about Eve and reflections on relationships that sputter out, on moving to Oregon to embrace precious independence and solitude by the sea, and on the vicissitudes and revelations of COVID-19. Sullivan's poems are direct and sensuous, each lyric a vibrant vignette, a story with a lesson, a sensuous homily defining holiness as lushly earthy. These are prosy poems that evolve in poetic form and precision over the book's arc; moving, forthright, and fresh poems about loneliness and desire, beauty and pain. Sullivan's collection is a welcoming and rewarding volume, especially for readers tentative about poetry.
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April 15, 2024
In this sunny debut collection, Sullivan traces a lifelong journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance with deceptive depth. The poems capture relatable small pleasures of life and a spirit of resilience, as she recalls facing such challenges as a bad marriage, and acts of bravery, such as her relocation to Portland, Ore., for a new start. The most troubling parts of life provide an opportunity to seize the day: “Look, America is awful and the earth is too hot and the truth of/ the matter is we’re all up against the clock. It makes everything/ simple and urgent: there’s only time to turn toward what you truly/ love.” While romantic love can be a destructive force, there are always opportunities to live and love again: “Is there a way to love and not die? I’m not sure but the Alaskan/ wood frog freezes solid in winter only to blast back in spring.” There are a fair number of pieces of less substance, but even many of these offer delightfully musical moments, as in “Remember What It Was Like to Be a Kid?” which begins, “All skinned knees,/ pavement and sick-sweet/ candy in the sticky backseat.” Sullivan’s unpretentious and blunt recounting of her experiences is a breath of fresh air.