Featured in the Shelf Unbound list of 2024 Indie Summer Reads

"The remarkable poems of Blue Atlas chart an expansive life which spins around an epicenter of loss, but loss is too tame a word, really, for what this speaker bears. 'I am a woman swollen with the history of my dead, ' Rich writes, 'a body awash in stories.' She describes an imperiled childhood and a young adulthood that culminates in a coerced midterm abortion, which 'stays suspended in resin / like a tiny scorpion, / transforming anger into amber.' Blue Atlas exquisitely performs the way trauma--the utter loss of self-determination, of choice--can turn a life to seawater, to drift, to 'somehow, the might still be--' mapping 'constellations of in-between, ' suspended between deciding and undeciding, from a space outside of the circumference of longing, where poetry lives."--Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

"Plaintive and ferocious by turns, the voice in Susan Rich's poems keeps asking the same question: 'Does anyone escape her own story?' The answer, of course, is no, especially when the effects of an early loss keep troubling the later decades of a life, exerting measures of devastation, regret, and nostalgia. Blue Atlas is Rich's sixth book of poems, and it marks an apotheosis--an apotheosis that, as the title suggests, is suffused with amplitude and intimacy, woundedness and wonder. Rich has arrived at a place of wisdom in her work, enthralled by still another essential question: 'what is this heaviness // embedded in our good luck-- / this sharp, bronzed hinge?'"--Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones

"Blue Atlas is both compelling and challenging, nuanced and boundary-breaking. Susan Rich fearlessly plunges her readers into discussions that many writers avoid, guiding them through with a speaker as engaging as the various poetic forms she uses. Rich is a bold poet, whose work resonates in our present moment." --Tyler Truman Julian, The Shore

"Rich's language is honest, raw, and emotion-driven. The poems retell the
speaker's story from different vantage points, using a range of
forms--including questionnaires, an outline for a freshman essay, and a
curriculum vitae, among others--to explore feelings of guilt, regret,
loneliness, and self-doubt"--Leonora Simonovis, The Poetry Foundation

Featured in the Shelf Unbound list of 2024 Indie Summer Reads

"The remarkable poems of Blue Atlas chart an expansive life which spins around an epicenter of loss, but loss is too tame a word, really, for what this speaker bears. 'I am a woman swollen with the history of my dead, ' Rich writes, 'a body awash in stories.' She describes an imperiled childhood and a young adulthood that culminates in a coerced midterm abortion, which 'stays suspended in resin / like a tiny scorpion, / transforming anger into amber.' Blue Atlas exquisitely performs the way trauma-the utter loss of self-determination, of choice--can turn a life to seawater, to drift, to 'somehow, the might still be--' mapping 'constellations of in-between, ' suspended between deciding and undeciding, from a space outside of the circumference of longing, where poetry lives."--Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

"Plaintive and ferocious by turns, the voice in Susan Rich's poems keeps asking the same question: 'Does anyone escape her own story?' The answer, of course, is no, especially when the effects of an early loss keep troubling the later decades of a life, exerting measures of devastation, regret, and nostalgia. Blue Atlas is Rich's sixth book of poems, and it marks an apotheosis--an apotheosis that, as the title suggests, is suffused with amplitude and intimacy, woundedness and wonder. Rich has arrived at a place of wisdom in her work, enthralled by still another essential question: 'what is this heaviness // embedded in our good luck-- / this sharp, bronzed hinge?'"--Rick Barot, author of Moving the Bones

"Blue Atlas is both compelling and challenging, nuanced and boundary-breaking. Susan Rich fearlessly plunges her readers into discussions that many writers avoid, guiding them through with a speaker as engaging as the various poetic forms she uses. Rich is a bold poet, whose work resonates in our present moment." --Tyler Truman Julian, The Shore

"Rich's language is honest, raw, and emotion-driven. The poems retell the
speaker's story from different vantage points, using a range of
forms--including questionnaires, an outline for a freshman essay, and a
curriculum vitae, among others--to explore feelings of guilt, regret,
loneliness, and self-doubt"--Leonora Simonovis, The Poetry Foundation

Publisher: Red Hen Press

Pub date: 2024-04-02

Length: 112 pages