The Open Door by Ruth Smullin

Ruth Ann Smullin’s collection, The Open Door, invites the reader to consider the shape of memory, the way we experience our lives as moments and interactions, laden with feeling. Smullin is a clear-eyed guide; her poems unfold simply and without sentimentality. In “Pomegranate” she describes the fruit as ‘my work of art – /my eye, the medium./As rosy skin begins to fade and shrivel,/ I struggle to fix forever/the exact shade, the particular form.’ With careful attention, Smullin takes us through the lighted rooms of a childhood and adolescence, of marriage and loss, love and art, and leads us to the final poem, “Yom Kippur Under the Night Sky,” where we find ourselves among boisterous, expectant, joyful families joining together to mark the Day of Atonement.

–Mary Buchinger, author of  e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling and Aerialist

In The Open Door, Ruth Ann Smullin invites us to share her experiences of art, nature and family.  “….. an open door frames a path through unruly vegetation…”  she tells us in her title poem, artfully setting the tone for rest of a collection rich in feeling and reflection. In her poem “Old Letters”, she observes that  “Every word mattered, too important to throw away…” a singular, meaningful point: in sharing our stories we connect to others. Smullin’s poetry opens a door to moments we have in common yet each experience uniquely as we traverse this wild and crazy life.

–Krikor Der Hohannesian, author of Ghosts and Whispers and Refuge in the Shadows.

“…–absence cast into/presence….”  writes author Ruth Ann Smullin  in her poem  “Legacy.”  These words well describe her chapbook, The Open Door. In these poems, color and the sensuous world are counterpoised between memory and loss. This collection is beautiful: one wants to read it over and over.  The Open Door invites us to remember, to mourn, and to celebrate. The work is deeply human, the essence of poetry.  Ruth Ann Smullin speaks to —and for –the heart; multi chambered, complex, and hopeful.

–Kathleen Spivack, author of Unspeakable Things and With Robert Lowell and His Circle