The Hidden Wilderness by Linda Ann Suddarth

“Linda Suddarth is the poet of joy in an age where such a being is rather unlikely. Few American poets see America with such sheer exaltation of spirit. Her work is deceptively simple–pared to the emotional bone in lines that have barely enough words for one or two stressed syllables, with no attempt at slyness, cool, slickness, or “originality”, it sounds like nobody else’s. Defenseless, its nakedness and honesty is its protection. And it is wise, too, in its quiet discerning way.”

–Frederick Turner, winner of the Levinson Poetry Prize, is author of Apocalypse: an Epic Poem, and Light Within the Shade: Eight Hundred Years of Hungarian Poetry.

“The Hidden Wilderness” is Linda Ann Suddarth’s exploration of “other places,” as she calls them. Listen to their litany: sacred spaces, behind a story, where happiness reigns, some wild space, forever, snowy places, enchanted spots. This list is not complete; these are places of the imaginal, where reason and rationality struggle to enter. One line particularly in this elegant collection jumped out at me: “something new is always turning up.” That line sums up the adventure places that her poems elicit in us. I will be rereading her verse for some time.”

–Dennis Patrick Slattery, author of Twisted Sky: Selected Poems and Just Below the Water Line, Selected Poems.

“One only needs to see, to listen, to background sounds,” to “tiny insects singing in the trees,” to “nocturnal comings and goings,” to dreams. The Hidden Wilderness gives elegant voice to wounded spirit healed, revealed, at home now in its earthly skin and beautifully whole. In Linda Ann Suddarth’s lovely, ethereal poems the “dark formless inner stirrings take shape and are given a local habitation and a name.”

–Robin Turner, author of bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press)