Dropping Into the Flower - Softcover

"Anyone anticipating something conventional from these flower poems is in for a stunning surprise. Dropping Into The Flower is by turns passionately sexual, wrenching, heartbreakingly elegiac, humorous, tender, joyous, celebratory--and always unexpected. Susan King has indeed dropped deep into the flower of our complicated, confusing lives and given us metaphors to help us understand them. In one poem, 'Bringing Them Back Out, ' she writes of someone who happens upon flowers in her garden and is mesmerized by their gorgeous colors: 'They didn't see you coming./ They didn't have time to close up.' That is what will happen to the reader of this collection. You won't see what is coming, and you won't have time to close up."--Susan Allen Toth, author of Leaning into the Wind
"In one of the poems in Dropping into the Flower, Susan Deborah King writes of the 'intersection where/heaven turns to earth and earth to heaven.' There is a majestic yearning for harmony between the realms of spirit and flesh in these poems. They put me in mind of the best in the tradition of the Romantic poets in the way they celebrate the beauties of the physical world while acknowledging the darker truths of loss. This collection deserves to be in the company of Wordsworth and Frost and Mary Oliver."--Jim Heynen, author of The Fall of Alice K.: A Novel
"What are we to learn from the loss of loved ones, from the unspeakable tragedy of a young person's accidental gun death, from wounds that can never heal, from bombs and plagues and mass killings? Sam King, a gentle leader indeed, teaches us to plant our griefs and sorrows along with our tulip bulbs - and then to watch, wait and witness the explosion of life they hold. In these poems, she does God's work."--Sarah T (Sally) Williams, former book editor, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Bright, lively, high-powered, sensuous: Susan Deborah King's Dropping into the Flower is no ditzy stroll through daisies. The world's mayhem, d
-Anyone anticipating something conventional from these flower poems is in for a stunning surprise. Dropping Into The Flower is by turns passionately sexual, wrenching, heartbreakingly elegiac, humorous, tender, joyous, celebratory--and always unexpected. Susan King has indeed dropped deep into the flower of our complicated, confusing lives and given us metaphors to help us understand them. In one poem, 'Bringing Them Back Out, ' she writes of someone who happens upon flowers in her garden and is mesmerized by their gorgeous colors: 'They didn't see you coming./ They didn't have time to close up.' That is what will happen to the reader of this collection. You won't see what is coming, and you won't have time to close up.---Susan Allen Toth, author of Leaning into the Wind
-In one of the poems in Dropping into the Flower, Susan Deborah King writes of the 'intersection where/heaven turns to earth and earth to heaven.' There is a majestic yearning for harmony between the realms of spirit and flesh in these poems. They put me in mind of the best in the tradition of the Romantic poets in the way they celebrate the beauties of the physical world while acknowledging the darker truths of loss. This collection deserves to be in the company of Wordsworth and Frost and Mary Oliver.---Jim Heynen, author of The Fall of Alice K.: A Novel
-What are we to learn from the loss of loved ones, from the unspeakable tragedy of a young person's accidental gun death, from wounds that can never heal, from bombs and plagues and mass killings? Sam King, a gentle leader indeed, teaches us to plant our griefs and sorrows along with our tulip bulbs - and then to watch, wait and witness the explosion of life they hold. In these poems, she does God's work.---Sarah T (Sally) Williams, former book editor, the Minneapolis Star Tribune
-Bright, lively, high-powered, sensuous: Susan Deborah King's Dropping into the Flower is no ditzy stroll through daisies. The world's mayhem, 'hideous with grief' remains elbow-near. But King offers readers these beautifully crafted poems; they remind us that a garden's life-cycle can '...raise the alarming/ standard of love.' Her poems are allegories, metaphors, crescendos of passion, of life. They are irrepressible outbursts like the graffiti King found on the Appalachian Trail: 'I was love.' This is poetry that urges us to see that '...(to) have one's essence be/to another/(is) utterly essential...' and to live, 'as if your soul were a seed splitting open.'---Sharon Chmielarz, author of Love from the Yellowstone Trail
"Anyone anticipating something conventional from these flower poems is in for a stunning surprise. Dropping Into The Flower is by turns passionately sexual, wrenching, heartbreakingly elegiac, humorous, tender, joyous, celebratory--and always unexpected. Susan King has indeed dropped deep into the flower of our complicated, confusing lives and given us metaphors to help us understand them. In one poem, 'Bringing Them Back Out, ' she writes of someone who happens upon flowers in her garden and is mesmerized by their gorgeous colors: 'They didn't see you coming./ They didn't have time to close up.' That is what will happen to the reader of this collection. You won't see what is coming, and you won't have time to close up."--Susan Allen Toth, author of Leaning into the Wind

"In one of the poems in Dropping into the Flower, Susan Deborah King writes of the 'intersection where/heaven turns to earth and earth to heaven.' There is a majestic yearning for harmony between the realms of spirit and flesh in these poems. They put me in mind of the best in the tradition of the Romantic poets in the way they celebrate the beauties of the physical world while acknowledging the darker truths of loss. This collection deserves to be in the company of Wordsworth and Frost and Mary Oliver."--Jim Heynen, author of The Fall of Alice K.: A Novel

"What are we to learn from the loss of loved ones, from the unspeakable tragedy of a young person's accidental gun death, from wounds that can never heal, from bombs and plagues and mass killings? Sam King, a gentle leader indeed, teaches us to plant our griefs and sorrows along with our tulip bulbs - and then to watch, wait and witness the explosion of life they hold. In these poems, she does God's work."--Sarah T (Sally) Williams, former book editor, the Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Bright, lively, high-powered, sensuous: Susan Deborah King's Dropping into the Flower is no ditzy stroll through daisies. The world's mayhem, 'hideous with grief' remains elbow-near. But King offers readers these beautifully crafted poems; they remind us that a garden's life-cycle can '...raise the alarming/ standard of love.' Her poems are allegories, metaphors, crescendos of passion, of life. They are irrepressible outbursts like the graffiti King found on the Appalachian Trail: 'I was love.' This is poetry that urges us to see that '...(to) have one's essence be/to another/(is) utterly essential...' and to live, 'as if your soul were a seed splitting open.'"--Sharon Chmielarz, author of Love from the Yellowstone Trail