In this amazing first book, Beth Suter gives us poems of such power we want to read them again and again. A strong tie to ancestry, to the place of her birth makes me feel in this work a kind of archival wisdom. Her grandmother, out hunting, sees a winter deer in a wild-rose bramble, but hearing it pray, lays down her rifle with, "a hunger for something other than venison." There is nothing sentimental in her poems. They deal with the ordinary that becomes extraordinary. As she washes her skillet her son leans into her saying, "our world is curved, that's why/parallel lines bend toward each other." The title poem exemplifies her connection with nature, "she inherits the snake story" and we are given a gift to treasure with this book.
-Allegra Jostad Silberstein, Poet Laureate Emerita of Davis, CABeth Suter has birthed a series of poems about facets of love in her lyrical voice-the love for a grandmother, parents, cousins, husband, son-even, as the title of one poem says, "For the Daughter I Can't Have." Each poem unfolds a small story, large in meaning, from the pain of a cesarean scar "squeezing me breathless" to the inheritance of emptiness, even the view out a rainy kitchen window. Suter reflects that "what's gone is everywhere," but she's captured it in gems of poetry, and put it on the page, thank goodness, for all to read.
-Jan Haag, editor, Amherst Writers & Artists PressBeth Suter writes brave poems, revealing poems. Her work in Snake and Eggs reminds us that poetry can have music and beauty in the language without being the least bit obscure like in the poem "Easter Mushroom Hunting," "hungry, we follow the scent/of oak tannin and cave/where just-thawed forest floor/hides meaty, buttery bulbs..." The words are placed together like the lyrics of a delicate song, and yet they tell a story. Reading Beth Suter's Snake and Eggs made me want to write more poems.
-James Lee Jobe, Poet Laureate Emeritus, Davis, CA
