Overview
The fifty-three poems in Deciphering the Desert by Susan Cummins Miller, award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, arise from the mysteries that surround us in the intersections of landscape, science, history, prehistory, and Time. These poems excavate what lies behind, beneath, and beyond surface observations and experiences-the extraordinary in the commonplace-and they capture the healing power and renewal to be found in the desert West.
Full Product Details
Author: Susan Cummins Miller
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Imprint: Finishing Line Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 0.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.127kg
ISBN: 9781646629794
ISBN 10: 1646629795
Pages: 78
Publication Date: 06 January 2023
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
Each time Susan Cummins Miller walked into her childhood library in Pasadena, she saw these words above the door: Be made whole by the great spaces and the stars. The poems in Deciphering the Desert are filled with the stars. And shells. And dry bones and shining stones. Azure skies and back roads, Joshua trees, pack rats and yellow butterflies. Susan's curiosity about the natural world began by asking questions on summer trips with her family throughout the West. And receiving answers. In one poem, Miller questions the La Brea Tar Pit woman: Did you ask questions? Did you feel the subtle shift in tenor when answers appeared, as if from the very air? The poems in Deciphering the Desert are crafted the same way the earth is: with specific details and colors, and the names of things intact in the starlit secret places, ... the riverside camps. The mysteries of nature become clearer as we are made whole by Susan's words.-Liza Porter, author of Red Stain, Keep the Singing and Del Bac From a plastic dashboard Jesus to bared-soul musings, poet/geologist Susan Cummins Miller leads readers on a lyrical field trip through family, culture, and, most of all, the natural world-thus helping us decipher far more than the desert.-Wynne Brown, author of The Forgotten Botanist: Sara Plummer Lemmon's Life of Science and Art
Author Information
Tucson writer Susan Cummins Miller, a former field geologist and college instructor, is the author of the novels Death Assemblage, Detachment Fault, Quarry, Hoodoo, Fracture, and Chasm. She compiled and edited the anthology A Sweet, Separate Intimacy: Women Writers of the American Frontier, 1800-1922, and her award-winning poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Finishing Line Press recently released her chapbook of poems, Making Silent Stones Sing.
