The poems in this collection store memories in the land: “fresh turned loam”, black dirt / slick and broken / heaped in the scent / of yesterday’s story.” The poems paint rural scenes, the stage for her beginnings, and prepare the reader to experience loss when her mother “slipped out early on a nightingale’s song.”
The mother-daughter relationship is wrought with a lifetime collection of memories forged by living long and well. Her use of the five senses delivers images bearing hope in every well crafted line. “We are trestle bridges suspended over memories…”
-Judith Bader Jones, author of Delta Pearls, Moon flowers on the Fence, and The Language of Small Rooms.
Drawing from the simplest of items, everyday personal encounters, and common natural occurrences, Sunderland, through her mastery of poetic technique, reveals that when these things converge with life-altering events, meaning is infused into moments and images that can be cherished for a lifetime. When an honest portrayal of the human condition is combined with a mastery of allegory, allusion, imagery, metaphor, and symbolism, readers can avail themselves of the poet’s skills to enter a poem as if they were the active participants in its events. It is not a simple thing to convey such depth in writing, nor can it be achieved without living a life in full.
O.P.W. Fredericks, Editor & Publisher,
The Lives You Touch Publications
Read this review from Neon Magazine on At the Boundary
janetsunderland.com 