Rafting on the Water Table: Poems

As the title implies, these poems are concerned with exploring the implicit in our world, the common elements that nourish and connect us, things we may not understand until someone with great vision-like Welsh-shows us. The poems compare buoyancy to wisdom, water to the inevitabilities of life. They express awe and admiration for children and science and the nature of the world.

Susan Steger Welsh is a native of St. Paul. She is a freelance writer of video scripts and executive speeches for corporations, and her work has been honored with many national and local awards. This is her first book.

"Minnesota Voices does it again! Rafting, on the Water Table launches an exciting new poet who promises to have a long and distinguished career. With sure line and deft grace, [Welsh] sets her simple poetic table as if it were a banquet. These are poems that will not tire or grow homely in time they possess the emotional authority of the well-made object."-Jonis Agee, author ofThe Weight of Dreams and Taking the Wail

"Here's a book about finding one's place inside the unit of a phrase, a sentence, a family, community, the natural world, history. The book's large ambitions are disguised with a sometimes breathtakingly light touch. Susan Steger Welsh knows about gravity, Cicero, Custer, prairie, the edge between land and ocean, neutrinos, and jack pines. In her voice she holds all that she knows lightly, and folds that knowledge into lines and stanzas about what she wonders, considers: love, communion between the living and the dead, hatred and its antidotes, pride, joy, sorrow and grace. This is a fine first book, written with style and wisdom."-Deborah Keenan, author ofHappiness. Poems