Throughout this book, deeply moving poems about the illness and death of the poets husband are interspersed with others that contemplate the interconnectedness of all things-whales, music, stars, and even her husband drinking Faulkners bourbon somewhere in the airless beyond. These poems have a luminosity that comes only through experience of both suffering and joy. Dannye Powell At the beginning of Susan Ludvigsons sparkling collection, she writes of the spirit, I want it to gleam / no matter how much / pain infuses it. Kevin Prufer Susan Ludvigsons gleaming poems -poems about the slow death of her husband Scot Ely-speak to us in a voice of such hushed intimacy, wed follow her anywhere-into her back garden with its roses and feathery pecan trees, into her dining room of birds and bougainvilleas, even into those darker or unconscious spaces where trouble mounts, where everything solid turns liquid, and nothing is as it should be.

I have long admired Susan Ludvigsons poetry, and this is her most moving book yet, one I know Ill return to gladly. These plainspoken poems conceal enormous complexities of emotion and thought -mournful, hopeful, present to the inevitability of loss and the fact of time. Review Quotes Here, Susan Ludvigson considers the loss of a husband against intricate, often dreamlike landscapes where cockatiels multiply magically in their cages, remembered foreign cities be ominous and strange, and the deceased unfolds into the present, tangible and real. Interspersed with these poems are her own explorations - in part distraction from the pain of watching her husband decline, in part a long-held desire into painting. Book Synopsis The running theme through the collection Wave as If You Can See Me is the progression of illnesses resulting in the death of the poets husband, and fiction writer Scott Ely, from the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. About the Book In Wave as If You Can See Me, Ludvigson explores the illness and death of her husband, along with her own ventures into the visual arts.

The wave susan