French Lessons by Roberta Hatcher

Roberta Hatcher encounters the world as if it were a strange new language. With incisive perception and an open heart, she conjugates and interrogates personal and cultural experiences alike – turning them over to reveal their facets in sharp, clear light. The flare of a match becomes a moving elegy. A newspaper folded for recycling becomes a dark cultural emblem. Breath clouding a car window becomes “music made visible.” Hatcher’s poems are wise and quietly courageous. As she observes: “We are bearing down on heaven / with green days growing thin. I don’t flinch.”
–Richard St. John

These poems savor the space between utterance and meaning as they translate past to present, loneliness to lust, song to dance, peacetime to catastrophe. Hatcher has a polyglot’s grip on the limits of language, but as an occasion for wonder and pleasure, not despair.
–Joy Katz

I wholeheartedly endorse French Lessons. This poet has learned her lessons well. A perfect combination of intellect and heart, and best of all, these poems are interesting.
–Michael Wurster, Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange