Description
“In Frangible Operas, Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a seer at the height of her formidable artistic powers, gathering parallel realities, fractured light, music of blue flowers, syllables of leaves, stars fallen in nets we cast, and the unseen seeds of our imaginations, such that with every vulnerable song we experience the wholeness of what’s sacred – grief, joy, love, hope in wonder. These exquisite poems, their stunning imagery, expansive and focused, witness ‘the wilderness inside us,’ even as they ‘pulse with the energy of the soul’s primal blast.’”
-William O’Daly, author of The New Gods and translator of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Twilight
In Frangible Operas, a couple waits for the bus, “The old man was turned / toward her in a half-twist, / like a landlocked diver- / …the only fine fish / in his sea–or, as if she was / the last magic flower…” While the poet teaches poems to prisoners, and listens to the trees and birds, she lets death be everywhere, ever present as rain, hummingbirds, cold air, and clouds. “We will think we are still dreaming / when the ghosts of the mothers and fathers arrive, / when they hold hands with us, singing.”
-Joyce Jenkins
“Tonight the bells of the flowers ring out,” begins the title poem in Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s exquisite new collection, and you will want to stop and listen. Frangible Operas is a book of honed astonishments. I love the way each line pays attention and makes you attend, the way each poem lets you breathe before its ending takes away your breath. When Kelly-DeWitt describes a woman’s arms in a painting by Raphael as forming “a perfect basketry,” she might as well be describing her own poems and the impeccably artful way they contain whole worlds.”
– Susan Cohen, author of Democracy of Fire
Sacramento resident Susan Kelly-DeWitt is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow. Her previous collection, Gatherer’s Alphabet, was published by Gunpowder Press in 2022 as the inaugural book in the California Poets Series. She is also the author of Gravitational Tug (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020), Spider Season (Cold River Press, 2016), The Fortunate Islands (Marick Press, 2008), and a number of previous small press and online collections. Her work has also appeared in many anthologies, and in print and online journals at home and abroad, recently as the featured American Poet in the UK journal The High Window. Her past professional and writing life includes having been a reviewer for Library Journal, the editor-in-chief of the online journal Perihelion, the Program Director of the Sacramento Poetry Center and the Women’s Wisdom Arts Program, a Poet in the Schools and a Poet in the Prisons, a blogger for Coal Hill Review, and a longtime instructor for the UC Davis Division of Continuing Education. She is currently a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Northern California Book Reviewers Association and a contributing editor for Poetry Flash. She is also an exhibiting visual artist. Please visit her website at www.susankelly-dewitt.com.
