Meet Me Out There

In Meet Me Out There, trees don't threaten to topple in a storm; instead they "bend to bless you" in Shutta Crum's sunny new chapbook. Her poems are delightful excursions into language as well as life. -Enid Shomer, Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing, 2013

Shutta invites the reader to join her on a passage. Like a line from her first poem, Meet Me Out There, this collection of poems strings together "wet footprints trailing through fields," each an authentic, still-moist impression leading to another. She conjures out of Africa our "First Mother," from maples thrumming cicadas, from within "where pools are memory deep," and colors with "impatient greens and heart-deep browns." She shows us how sublime an ache can be, and the constancy of love in a grandfather's dimming. She is playful and reverent about feelings, especially in "One Winter's Day." Shutta does not shy from grief, but also does not wallow in it. She finds the meaningful objects and people that bring living to a place of understanding and heart. She doesn't paint a hopeful dawn, but Shutta offers her hand through her poetry as both solace and encouragement. I get this book. You should too.

-Mark Andrew James Terry, Editor, Of Poets & Poetry