Doe - by Susan Baller-Shepard (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

From the title, Doe, Susan Baller-Shepard's metaphor of a female deer moves in and out of this collection, appearing in the periphery, then moving on as Baller-Shepard mines memories of life on the prairie. From a variety of voices, Doe presents interior and exterior landscapes, from caged zebra finches or a sick child, to a family farm sale, or the sound of owls at night. With the step-step, pause, step-step cadence of a deer's approach, Baller-Shepard's poetry collection advances from the personal to the mystical. Her poems advance with that step-step, pause, step-step noting other creatures in the woods (women, men, children, bees, mayflies, pheasants) and bigger concerns beyond the woods (the Last Holocaust Act of WWII, religion, wars, citizenship, God), moving deftly between the natural and spiritual world like a deer moves along the borders where the natural world and the manicured world meet.

Review Quotes

"From the title, Doe, by Susan Baller-Shepard, anticipates a thicket of feminine myth and symbol: motherhood, martyrdom, victimhood; defenselessness, passivity; naked beauty hunted, stalked, violated, enshrined perhaps but never trophied, not like their antlered fathers and sons. The trick and magic of and through these poems is the metamorphosis of the metaphor, suggested, argued, developed through a sleight of forms, often repeating forms that advance argument passively through repetition, tricksterish word play, re-castings of memory and narrative. Reading them becomes a kind of active listening, hearing a kind of speaking; and backtracking, sliding off, getting lost, staying still, retracing steps--all a kind of advance. All those female survival skills of defense--the withdraw, hide, step out of the way, disappear tactics--unfold an offense, and change the world. Hear, hear, hear! And rejoice!"

--Lucia Cordell Getsi, PhD, Former Spoon River Poetry Review Editor, Author of Intensive Care

"Don't let the idea of a tender-eyed doe lull you into a place of comfort. Take a deep breath. Susan Baller-Shepard is about to take you on a ride through the emotional rapids of the female experience and, indeed, the vulnerabilities, perplexities and revelations of anyone who has ever loved fiercely, worried deeply and observed life, in all its beauty and despair, with an unflinching eye."

--Charmaine Wilkerson, winner of the 2018 Best Novella by Saboteur Awards for her novella-in-flash How to Make a Window Snake

"To read the poems in this fine first collection is to stroll through the lives of many females--human and animal alike--with a most companionable guide. Baller-Shepard is a remarkable new poetic voice equally at ease with observing farm women at work, discussing Einstein's Grand Unified Theory, or contemplating the life span of a mayfly. Through Baller-Shepard's careful excavation of the embers of memory--a high-backed wooden bench, a grandmother's starched dress, the red linoleum of a farmhouse kitchen--you will find yourself mining the narrative of your own life. That is this poet's gift to her readers."

--Judith Valente, author of poetry collections Discovering Moons and Inventing An Alphabet, and nonfiction books Atchison Blue and How to Live

"In a few lines, Susan Baller-Shepard's poems tell stories so personal we will recognize them as our own. Stories of love and longing, of unfinished adolescence, of wrestling with death. In a world intent on selling us ways to plaster over our vulnerability, Baller-Shepard's poems do the opposite. By stripping away the pretense, she does nothing less than help us find our soul."

--Ruth Everhart, author of Ruined and Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land