Sometimes in our culture it seems that poetry has become tiny. It should be huge. It should be the whale that swallows the world and gives it back to us transformed. Susan Anderson's work shapes passion on the page, utilizing a variety of personas, delving into the past of a person or a place, taking sides, making an argument. She's keenly attuned to the eloquence of the voiceless, portraying the spiritual resourcefulness of the people whose culture she was not only born into, but chose to embrace. The stories of ordinary life are the substance of history; the passage of events is reflected in daily intimacies. Through these intricacies, African Americans have provided their gifts to the world. Susan Anderson's poetry strives to contain some bits of their music and history, justice and love, which is woven into every corner of America, and so the world.