If You Would Love Me by Patricia Sheppard

One poem in Patricia Sheppard‘s beautiful first collection refers to the “effective economy” of washing one’s bed sheets while living at the YMCA.  These two words aptly characterize Sheppard’s style.  She never says more than is needed.  Equally eloquent when conjuring either the body or the spirit—”Sex,/immortality, we breathe it in”—these poems evince throughout a solid musical intelligence that’s rare in poetry these days.  But—as the scorching poem about her mother’s death, “I Knew She Would Wait,” makes plain—Sheppard doesn’t shy away from the most demanding, fraught subjects.  “These sounds pierce the heart purely,” she says in “The Whistling Swans.”  That claim rings true for this collection, a book that’s not just promising, but rather a work of settled accomplishment.

–Steven Cramer,  MFA Program in Creative Writing, Lesley University