Book Review: hearing voices poems by Barbara Ruth Saunders

hearing voices poems by Barbara Ruth Saunders
En Route Books and Media, LLC (2024)
Saint Louis, MO 
pp 35

Barbara Ruth Saunders’ debut poetry collection is a shining example of the small things that sustain us. These small things might be people, a sense of place, or the objects in our lives that we hold near and dear to our hearts. What emerges in this poetry collection are the larger truths about humanity. Invocation resurrects her father as he teaches his daughter how to handle a vinyl record. The room is not seen, but we can feel its presence as much as we can feel the tenderness between father and child. In The View from the Tallest Building in the World, Saunders begins her outing as a small child who took her grandfather’s hand, only to learn she is a poet. After 40 Years of Counting Down the Days to Retirement, the man no longer knows who is he is or how to live without the identity given to him by his job. “Buried that gold watch in the yard, where bones go later.” In Wayfinding at Pere Lachaise, she mingles “with the resting dead.” Saunders is at her best when she takes what might seem small and ordinary to explain the thread in humanity that ennobles us all.