In Conversations with Trees, Susan Dambroff examines the dualities hidden deep within the human heart and how those dualities are in dialogue with one another. These are tender poems which stand as witness to the passions of both pain and beauty. The poet wants us to see clearly and love deeply—even though we might “…watch smoke rise/talk about how a heart/can speak into the air.” Ultimately, she concludes “…insisting on love’s bravery/we go on.”

–Lois Roma-Deeley, author of four poetry collections; winner of the Jacapone da Todi Book Prize for her book The Short List of Certainties

Grounded in detail, yet expansively philosophical, these poems riffle shuffle, leafing cards of time, family, memory and nature so “even the past can be rearranged.” Fall into a dreamlike trance with equal parts clarity and slippage. A merging with earth: “if you lean against a tree/and breathe it/into your back/it brings your two lives/together.” These poems pull the bobbin thread, gathering together families and strangers, the past and the future, the internal and the external: “This house with its red door and everything it opens into, cut flowers on the kitchen table and the field that grew them…a staircase walk to a full moon.” Deceptively simple and spare, Dambroff’s deliberate arrangements and surprising word pairings crack us open to “wide delights.” Here, time is liquid: “to fall into the future/the best unknown.” Hardly a period appears in this collection, leaving us breathless, rock-tumbling along, shaping us along the way.

–Kendra Tanacea, author of A Filament Burns in Blue Degrees, Lost Horse Press

Susan Dambroff’s poems illuminate the small moments in our day-to-day lives that profoundly alter our perceptions–moments that without careful observation, might go unnoticed. Excavating these moments with vivid images, Dambroff allows us to enter her inner world of memories and discoveries. Each poem embodies an experience that is familiar, universal, and infinitely precious.

–Kimi Sugioka, author of The Language of Birds, Manic D Press