The Cartographer's Tongue

White Pine Press, April 2000

Questions of geography, ethnic identity, and the crossing of cultural borders keep company with poetic form in this first collection of work.

"From the boldly erotic to the elegiac - Susan Rich gives us a collection of poems sensual yet exact in their language, generous in the range and power of their emotion." - J. M. Coetzee

“Susan Rich has not been hiding in a room somewhere writing poems. She has been out there in the wide world, observing searing details, responding with empathy, placing her patient ear right to the center of everyone’s stories; pledging—with compassion and conviction—to ‘pull the thread, click the needles…translate to yours, translate to mine.’ These poems will wound and haunt you, but the larger knowing they bring is crucial. Rich is a caring citizen of every heart-land.” - Naomi Shihab Nye