Broadsides & Ephemera is Loganberry's monthly poetry open mic. We invite members of the Loganberry community to read their own works of poetry or that of a poet they admire. Each month is guest-hosted by a different local poet, this month we are joined by…Rikki Santer!
Rikki Santer's poetry collection, Resurrection Letter was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and Shepherd's Hour, won the Paul Nemser Book Prize from Lily Poetry Review Books. In 2023, she was named Ohio Poet of the Year and currently serves as Artist-in-Residence at the Fran Ryan Center in Columbus, Ohio and a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council. Her fifteenth poetry collection, Could Be, was published this spring by Sheila-Na-Gig Press. Please contact her through her website, https://rikkisanter.com.
Rikki Santer's dazzling How to Board a Moving Ship makes the familiar brilliantly strange again. Neighbors are bears in "golden vanilla coats," garden gnomes wander, adolescence is electric and ever present, headlines promise life on other planets, and the cruel pageantry of our government is loud as a carnival. Between the lights and neighborhoods and catwalks, loss lives here, too, as when Santer describes her mother: "the palindrome of my mother's / chest scars, targets where her breasts used to be." Santer is both a magician and our Virgil, guiding us through each vignette, whether it's a vision from childhood - "memories wash / lean in the tides-red rover, red rover" - or "the politics of textile" and the splendor and harm of fashion. Santer invites us to marvel and reminds us that even in an unpredictable and painful world, there is still so much wonder ready for an audience.
-Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire.
Rikki Santer's dazzling How to Board a Moving Ship makes the familiar brilliantly strange again. Neighbors are bears in "golden vanilla coats," garden gnomes wander, adolescence is electric and ever present, headlines promise life on other planets, and the cruel pageantry of our government is loud as a carnival. Between the lights and neighborhoods and catwalks, loss lives here, too, as when Santer describes her mother: "the palindrome of my mother's / chest scars, targets where her breasts used to be." Santer is both a magician and our Virgil, guiding us through each vignette, whether it's a vision from childhood - "memories wash / lean in the tides-red rover, red rover" - or "the politics of textile" and the splendor and harm of fashion. Santer invites us to marvel and reminds us that even in an unpredictable and painful world, there is still so much wonder ready for an audience.
-Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire.
Rikki Santer's dazzling How to Board a Moving Ship makes the familiar brilliantly strange again. Neighbors are bears in "golden vanilla coats," garden gnomes wander, adolescence is electric and ever present, headlines promise life on other planets, and the cruel pageantry of our government is loud as a carnival. Between the lights and neighborhoods and catwalks, loss lives here, too, as when Santer describes her mother: "the palindrome of my mother's / chest scars, targets where her breasts used to be." Santer is both a magician and our Virgil, guiding us through each vignette, whether it's a vision from childhood - "memories wash / lean in the tides-red rover, red rover" - or "the politics of textile" and the splendor and harm of fashion. Santer invites us to marvel and reminds us that even in an unpredictable and painful world, there is still so much wonder ready for an audience.
-Ruth Awad, author of Set to Music a Wildfire.
"For those who may think poetry is obtuse and boring, In Pearl Broth: Poems New & Selected will shake that notion free. Rikki Santer's poems are chock-full of vibrant language that evokes responses in both the busy mind and the quiet heart of the reader: piffling questions multiply like maggots . . . the mall tilts on its axis . . .we like handcuffing matters down . . . secret bag of caramels in a lingerie drawer . . . little swords of wheat . . . fuzzy-hearted commas . . . a marimba of alchemy . . . canape?s of flummery . . . my museum of desperate clues. These poems stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. So moved by "A Swift and Fatal Plunge", I spent an evening reading about the tragic event that inspired Santer's stunning narrative. The notes I kept while reading In Pearl Broth will surely serve to inspire my own poem-making."
-Susan F. Glassmeyer, Invisible Fish; 2018 Ohio Poet of the Year
"For those who may think poetry is obtuse and boring, In Pearl Broth: Poems New & Selected will shake that notion free. Rikki Santer's poems are chock-full of vibrant language that evokes responses in both the busy mind and the quiet heart of the reader: piffling questions multiply like maggots . . . the mall tilts on its axis . . .we like handcuffing matters down . . . secret bag of caramels in a lingerie drawer . . . little swords of wheat . . . fuzzy-hearted commas . . . a marimba of alchemy . . . canape?s of flummery . . . my museum of desperate clues. These poems stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. So moved by "A Swift and Fatal Plunge", I spent an evening reading about the tragic event that inspired Santer's stunning narrative. The notes I kept while reading In Pearl Broth will surely serve to inspire my own poem-making."
-Susan F. Glassmeyer, Invisible Fish; 2018 Ohio Poet of the Year
"For those who may think poetry is obtuse and boring, In Pearl Broth: Poems New & Selected will shake that notion free. Rikki Santer's poems are chock-full of vibrant language that evokes responses in both the busy mind and the quiet heart of the reader: piffling questions multiply like maggots . . . the mall tilts on its axis . . .we like handcuffing matters down . . . secret bag of caramels in a lingerie drawer . . . little swords of wheat . . . fuzzy-hearted commas . . . a marimba of alchemy . . . canapés of flummery . . . my museum of desperate clues. These poems stopped me in my tracks more than a few times. So moved by "A Swift and Fatal Plunge", I spent an evening reading about the tragic event that inspired Santer's stunning narrative. The notes I kept while reading In Pearl Broth will surely serve to inspire my own poem-making."
-Susan F. Glassmeyer, Invisible Fish; 2018 Ohio Poet of the Year
"Many years ago, when I first traveled through Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College, I felt a strange Twilight-Zone presence in that Sunday-morning vacant town. The inn's proprietor was not surprised because "upstairs Rod Serling taught class." I felt the vibe. Now, I'm catching that vibe again with Rikki Santer's Stopover, her poetic riffs on Sterling's Twilight Zone, which takes the series to another dimension, where the allegories are soft reminders of our humanity, our vulnerability, and our innocence. Our enjoyment is seeing episodes with "no moral, no message, no prophetic tract/just a suit of armor held together by one bolt/call it faith." She soars, for instance, when she shares the bird's-eye view of Mickey Rooney as a washed-up jockey, condensing the aging loser in a prison-like room with "walls closing in as your consonants rattled, your character out of his mind with shortness, neon gel of your ranting, nighty night." Rikki and Rod parse the lonely life of a has-been: Rod's washed-up jockey and Rooney's seedy actor with "frayed pockets: king high, ace low." In her cento poem, she uses Serling's voice in a fantastic world full of question marks and leavened by the possibility but never the reality of bromides. Rikki Santer's poetic appreciation of The Twilight Zone series embraces for our consideration cynicism about our intentions and unconditional love for our imperfection. Enter her lyrical zone to enjoy Serling's simple tales as the stuff of poetry. If you think humankind to be masterfully in charge, then Rikki and Rod will remind you that we are doomed to be served on a platter by those who know we deserve it."
-John DeSando, producer and host of It'sMovie Time and
Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double
Take for NPR's WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.
"Many years ago, when I first traveled through Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College, I felt a strange Twilight-Zone presence in that Sunday-morning vacant town. The inn's proprietor was not surprised because "upstairs Rod Serling taught class." I felt the vibe. Now, I'm catching that vibe again with Rikki Santer's Stopover, her poetic riffs on Sterling's Twilight Zone, which takes the series to another dimension, where the allegories are soft reminders of our humanity, our vulnerability, and our innocence. Our enjoyment is seeing episodes with "no moral, no message, no prophetic tract/just a suit of armor held together by one bolt/call it faith." She soars, for instance, when she shares the bird's-eye view of Mickey Rooney as a washed-up jockey, condensing the aging loser in a prison-like room with "walls closing in as your consonants rattled, your character out of his mind with shortness, neon gel of your ranting, nighty night." Rikki and Rod parse the lonely life of a has-been: Rod's washed-up jockey and Rooney's seedy actor with "frayed pockets: king high, ace low." In her cento poem, she uses Serling's voice in a fantastic world full of question marks and leavened by the possibility but never the reality of bromides. Rikki Santer's poetic appreciation of The Twilight Zone series embraces for our consideration cynicism about our intentions and unconditional love for our imperfection. Enter her lyrical zone to enjoy Serling's simple tales as the stuff of poetry. If you think humankind to be masterfully in charge, then Rikki and Rod will remind you that we are doomed to be served on a platter by those who know we deserve it."
-John DeSando, producer and host of It'sMovie Time and
Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double
Take for NPR's WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.
"Many years ago, when I first traveled through Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College, I felt a strange Twilight-Zone presence in that Sunday-morning vacant town. The inn's proprietor was not surprised because "upstairs Rod Serling taught class." I felt the vibe. Now, I'm catching that vibe again with Rikki Santer's Stopover, her poetic riffs on Sterling's Twilight Zone, which takes the series to another dimension, where the allegories are soft reminders of our humanity, our vulnerability, and our innocence. Our enjoyment is seeing episodes with "no moral, no message, no prophetic tract/just a suit of armor held together by one bolt/call it faith." She soars, for instance, when she shares the bird's-eye view of Mickey Rooney as a washed-up jockey, condensing the aging loser in a prison-like room with "walls closing in as your consonants rattled, your character out of his mind with shortness, neon gel of your ranting, nighty night." Rikki and Rod parse the lonely life of a has-been: Rod's washed-up jockey and Rooney's seedy actor with "frayed pockets: king high, ace low." In her cento poem, she uses Serling's voice in a fantastic world full of question marks and leavened by the possibility but never the reality of bromides. Rikki Santer's poetic appreciation of The Twilight Zone series embraces for our consideration cynicism about our intentions and unconditional love for our imperfection. Enter her lyrical zone to enjoy Serling's simple tales as the stuff of poetry. If you think humankind to be masterfully in charge, then Rikki and Rod will remind you that we are doomed to be served on a platter by those who know we deserve it."
-John DeSando, producer and host of It'sMovie Time and
Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double
Take for NPR's WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.
