"The poems of Suddenly, Fruit are indeed ripe--ripe with sensuality, with language that is palpable. As if an old rift had been healed, dream, myth, flesh, spirit, history and consciousness are reunited and shown to be inseparable. Whether it's cooking dinner to NPR or watching a child's Christmas pageant, Linda Pennisi has a remarkable ability to see the mythic structures underpinning ordinary experience. And just as remarkably she hears how the ancient myths continue to speak. Her Persephone in modern dress reveals the dark currents tugging at our lives and shows us how experience, the dark and light of it, can-indeed, must-be embraced. These poems are womanly, wise, elegant, and profoundly generous in their affirmation of life, 'as if you had all along been praying for just this.'" --Betsy Sholl, Advance Reader