When You Get Here

by Shutta Crum

Here's everything you want in poetry. Understandable language—check. Interesting, inventive use of words—check. Topics that reference matters of common interest—check. Insights way beyond the usual—check. Don't skim this collection. You'd miss way too much that makes our lives meaningful. Enter and walk “unafraid in this new topography.” Sharon Scholl, Professor emerita of humanities. Author of Music and Culture,Death and the Humanities, and three chapbooks of poetry When You Get Here, is a celebration of the small, precise details that accumulate, like snowflakes, into a life. It’s a map guiding us through a landscape of grief, wonder and sensuality, touching all the delicate connections in between. We peek in cupboards, wrestle with lovers, walk on thin ice, followed by a wolf. Every poem reminds the reader to breathe, sense, and feel what it is to be alive. Joyce Sweeney, author of Impermanence and Wake up, Finishing Line Press,p>Here Shutta Crum’s love of language takes us on a fascinating journey, gives us “Driving Directions,” promises the road knows the way. She opens “Father’s Cupboard,”lets us see what held his world. She studies “A Philosophy of Luminescence”in a confining marriage and offers new light. In the poem“You Can Have It Back,” she wants to return the rib taken from Adam and given to woman, for it no longer holds her aright after the death of a poet friend. In “What I Bequeath,” Shutta says one day her bones will speak a language we will understand. We are fortunate—in this beautiful collection, she speaks clearly to us and we understand. Chris Lord, author of Field Guide to Luck and What We Leave, founder of Word’n Woman Press

70 pages, Paperback

Published March 3, 2020

About the author

Shutta Crum is bi-peninsular, spending half the year in Michigan and half the year in Florida. She is the author of three middle-grade novels and fifteen picture books, as well as many poems, magazine articles, and two poetry chapbooks for adults. Her books have made Bank Street College lists as well as state award lists. THUNDER-BOOMER! was an ALA and a Smithsonian Magazine “Notable Book” of the year. WHEN YOU GET HERE (poems for adults) won a gold Royal Palm Literary Award, (FL). She is also the author of two nearly wordless books MINE! and UH-OH! both published by Knopf. MINE! made the Texas 2X2 list and was a Crystal Kite Award winner for the illustrator Patrice Barton. Of MINE! the N. Y. Times said, “a delightful example of the drama and emotion that a nearly wordless book can convey.” In 2005 she was invited to read at the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. She is a retired librarian and now blogs regularly for the Florida Writers Association, writes a bimonthly column for the Fl. State Poetry Association magazine Of Poets & Poetry, and leads the Friday Follies writing group. In addition, she writes and publishes THE WORDSMITH’S PLAYGROUND, a monthly newsletter for writers. For more info: www.shutta.com

Reviews

[Amy Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow....I often find poetry difficult to read and more difficult to understand. I am a literal person, and very little poetry is written in the literal. When You Get Here by Shutta Crum started off for me the say way. I had a difficult time "feeling" what I though I was supposed to be feeling. Then, I read Translating Lines...And I read it again....and then a third time. Then I looked up the news story that it referenced....and read it a fourth time. Beautiful, heart-wrenching...Bravo...

[Gerri Almand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shutta Crum “almost” finds words for indescribable feelings, such as watching your child grow, still loving a spouse after many years, no longer loving a spouse after many years, losing a parent, and other profound and sometimes painful experiences of living. She seems to have found the pulse, not only in personal experiences but in the political world as well. I found myself especially moved by “Translating Lines,” Crum’s response to the massacre of schoolgirls in an Amish schoolhouse. I’m not a usual reader of poetry, but I appreciated this work.