Reviews
of Ruth
Ellen Kocher's Poetry
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“At a time when the
self-congratulating forces of darkness and greed strut and stomp across the
world stage, along comes Ruth Ellen Kocher. ‘The Life the Heart Leaves’—one
of many tantalizing selections—could well have been the title of this moving
collection. Unpredictable in voice and tone, these tender, tough poems narrate,
educate, commemorate, celebrate and vibrate. ‘The woman I have become is
speaking through my mouth,’ Kocher sings. ‘She says, God-forsaken
/ African violets are blooming / all over my bathroom as the city / rises, as
the fields lead to the city, / as the alleys sulk with their black / eyes and
their hurt smiles / and the city comforts them saying / I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Never again.’ This versatile poet blinks at nothing under the stars. Speaking
and singing in the many voices and key signatures of poetry, our primal human
language, Ruth Ellen Kocher shines and sheds visible and audible light. And
to darkness and ignorance, light is still spiritual Kryptonite.”
—Al Young
“One Girl Babylon
takes us from the great human luxury of a moment in which we ‘know her
hips / walk on water’ to the unmitigated and also human corruption of ‘the
indifference of urban seasons,’ delivering us to ourselves—humans
weary from understanding, weary from understanding
that is so close but which we keep from each other in so many ways, in so many
words. The speaker in these poems wears us out and is worn out—we reach
to each other, and this is the fine sensibility of these poems: we reach and
almost save each other. That is their moment. Reader and speaker, we are ready
to work, but too late. The work of the salvation shown to us here is not in
doing, but in undoing what has been done. We serve these poems best by listening,
as they have listened to us.”
—Alberto Rios
Praise for
When the Moon Knows You're Wandering:
"If we are all sometimes lost, as these haunting poems recognize, the gift
is that we are lost in this world, a world Kocher's compelling and often searingly
tender voice speaks from. ...When the Moon Knows You're Wandering, is,
in short, a very wise, beautiful and moving book."
—Beckian Fritz Goldberg
"Kocher’s subject
matter is refreshingly varied, the emotional tone drifting from languid, through
building, to outrage. ...The final section, “Wars Away” is pure lament,
a catalogue of the infinite ways in which the peril of living in a body is compensated
by a compassion felt and given, a hard-earned celebration of the specificity
of being human. It’s a fitting finale for 28 poems which sing in a voice
wavering through grief to triumph in the clear syllables of love."
—Sandy McKinney, Foreword
Magazine
"Ruth Ellen Kocher's
second book is an expedition into poetic space where she becomes a sojourner.
Kocher travels within this space, employing both free verse and formal techniques
to deal vividly with the motion of relationships . . ."
—Tara Betts, The Carolina
Quarterly
". . . a haunting yet
graceful collection that turns on the necessary resilience and fragility in
all of us. . ."
—Iron Horse Literary Review
Praise for Desdemona's Fire:
"At the heart of these stunning poems is a
precise and imaginative examination of the thin line that separates beauty and
terror, wisdom and madness, tolerance and hatred."
–Bruce Weigl