Billboard in the Clouds

by Suzanne S. Rancourt

In this remarkable debut book of poems, winner of the Native Writers First Book Award, Suzanne S. Rancourt, presents her experience as a mixed-raced person seeking understanding through relationship with the natural world and dominant culture. Her family portraits are reminiscent of E. A. Robinson; her sensuous nature poems are imbued with love of earth as a "blessing." Dance my legs are explosions
expressions
of lustful wind
i converse through cracks in the walls
slipping in my true intention like a snow drift
on the inside
side of a door i pound
your chest
has become my wailing wall
i crave your tongue dusted
with words and implications
i have something you need

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Songs of Archilochus, Unsolicited Press, release date, September / October 2023!! Here's what people are saying about my fourth book!

[In this collection Rancourt’s poems are a highly energized synthesis that pulls images from the many chambers of her life—a woman marine, a journalist, ambulance crew member. She is able to weave soul with the technical language of this or that employment with grace. “All/but the occasional high intensity lumen clusters, say, /of facility-housing-child-prisoners & various/violence of aborted humanity, are all beacons that Fanta/as sticky spill down your street, into your house, /your church, your lungs, because a round of pepper spray, /a couple of cans of tear gas/& rubber bullets can be like that…” The driving heart of these poems will invite you to take a walk with her. Her ability to mix disparate elements and make them cohere in imagination is remarkable.” ---Doug Anderson, VN Veteran, Pushcart Prize winner, author of: Undress, She Said; Horse Medicine; Bamboo Bridge; The Moon Reflected Fire; Blues for Unemployed Secret Police; Keep Your Head Down: Vietnam]

[“In Songs of Archilochus, a lyrical storm that marries sky and Earth and memory and presence, Rancourt’s voice vibrates across the landscape of body, ‘to cleanse the palette, to rinse earthly vulgarities/ spoken in abjection while present in the wandering.’ These poems are political and spiritual protests, inverted depictions of absence and passion and ephemera. Through powerful meditation and unexpected metaphor, Rancourt writes vertically, forces us to ask ourselves, ‘What is it – finally – that needs to be said?’”
- Tara Stillions Whitehead, author of They More Than Burned]

["Rancourt's words are earthy and intimate—like morning conversation between old friends, clear-eyed with the sorrows of shared experience, still hopeful for the future. Wherever she goes in her poems, she offers gifts of nature and spirit and grit. ‘Archilochus’ is an ambush, but the hummingbird lives."
—Randy Brown poetry editor, As You Were journal and author of FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire]




Be looking for the release of my fourth book in October 2023 from Unsolicited Press!!!!

Old Stones, New Roads, April 2021 Main Street Rag Press buy direct from Author

'murmurs at the gate', 2019, Unsolicited Press

Billboard in the Clouds, 2004, 1st print: Curbstone Press; 2nd print, Northwestern Univ. Press.

Reviews

[Ann Keller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this poet's word choices very interesting. She takes a granular approach to life, making the reader stop and consider, weighing thoughts and feelings. Some of the circumstances were very familiar to me and I identified with the poems heartily.

Interesting title choice, too. This book is as simple as a single drop of water on a Choke Cherry leaf or the Embryonic Weave, as complex as Thunderbeings,and a Light Wind Beyond Temple. Even though I have turned the last page, I still consider her words. For this insight, I humbly thank you.

[Suzanne Rancourt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic news! Northwestern University Press (NUPress) has reprinted Billboard in the Clouds!!!

The second print is now available for you! http://nupress.northwestern.edu/conte...