She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes

"Deeply personal, extravagantly public art. It is experimental in ways that May Swenson would have applauded." -- Alicia Ostriker, poet "This lovely contest winner will speak to women as surely as poets have spoken to the author, Suzette Marie Bishop. And the poets do speak to her. Much of her work is inspired by the work of others. With an eye and pen for detail, readers looking for poetry with a delicate touch are certain to love Bishop's book." --Carolyn Howard-Johnson "This is a deep, resonant, and rewarding collection; the gradual unfolding of its take on luck becomes, by the book's final lines, thrilling, as the stacked-up imagery of the previous 70 pages--bats, Rome, ruins, gynecological procedure, houses, cacti--spill over into a kind of juxtapositional grand-finale . . . If you don't believe poetry can be resonant and thrilling, this is the book to change your mind." Sean Chadwell, LareDOS "I am often accompanied by a great blue heron, which has haunted me from the time I first read Suzette Bishop's collection of poetry, She Took Off Her Wings & Shoes . . . when it rose from the pages on massive wings. This mystery bird does what Bishop's poems do for me (or to me), keeping me charmed, challenged, and, frankly rather tough, for one must be tough to read Bishop. Hers are poems of witness and speak of difficulties like mental illness, sexual violation, a hysterectomy, divorce, homelessness. In all, these poems are honest and unflinching, and they ask the same of us. They are also poems that do whatever they want, and this is something I particularly love about them . . . No camp owns these poems. They are experimental and collagistic, with startling splices of disparate discourse. They are distanced but also confessional. They are feminist but also feminine, with a delicacy imparting the feel of secrets shared by teenaged girls." Nancy Dunlop, 13th Moon "She writes with her tongue and her fingertip . . . she hears each word before she sees it." The New Formalist