True Blue by Susan Scheid

Sometimes a poet can reach down to a crystal chip, next to the heart, that holds everything authentic and true. Susan Scheid’s book True Blue (aptly named) shines with lyrical honesty. The experience and stories make you feel like you did, early on, when you first read books, and they were enticing and trustworthy. Flawless craft makes lines memorable; that’s one more reason why readers will want to return to this book, as I do.

–Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate, host of The Poet and The Poem

In True Blue, Susan Scheid covers the territory of heartbreak with great tenderness, but it is her reflections on the intimate details of daily living that will force you to pause, breathe and reread these poems. The poet blends meditative philosophy and stark imagery when she tells us, “I am holding my quiet center/Which brims like an ocean oracle” that inspires us to absorb her inner world and dive into our own. When Scheid says, “I will inhale the galaxy/and begin to turn” I’m willing to follow her on her journey of solitude, wherever it takes her.

–Carmen Calatayud, author of In the Company of Spirits and This Tangled Body

In this sparkling collection, Susan Scheid‘s poems are polished gems, each with a clarity and cut all their own. Whether it is an ode to dead skin cells or a delightfully fun gratitude poem dripping with expletives, a warm wit and intelligence infuses the work, work that invites camaraderie between poet and reader. To read these poems is “to know that you are not broken” Scheid writes in “from the ashes.” Scheid’s work seeks to reconnect us to marvel at our shared humanity.

–Teri Ellen Cross Davis, author of A More Perfect Union and Haint, O.B. Hardison Poetry Series Curator and Folger Poetry Programs Manager.