Bart Sutter's new poems embody a series of surprises. Why should a walk through a woodland bog call up the names and faces of first-grade girls? What's it like to be a one-year-old who's crawled beneath a grand piano while it's being played? Or an arborist, sky-high up a tree, who's suddenly attacked by killer bees? How come a Lutheran congregation worships at a boulder in the woods? Isn't this what poetry is for—situations, people, moments that take us by surprise and will not let us go?
Now in his seventies, Sutter is haunted by lost friends and places, so this book has an elegiac undertone which only heightens the celebrations—of kelp on a California beach, a sexual awakening, a grandson's messy mastery of solid food. The book is rich with stories, and their settings range from the poet's home ground in northern Minnesota to the backroads of New Mexico, to Ireland and Spain.
At home, as well as in his travels, Sutter finds those transcendent moments that keep us going, despite our disappointments and discouragements.