Earthen Vessels
Praise for
“Turn these pages and hear the distinct click of a camera, as prose and poems blend into richly detailed snapshots of a poet’s earliest formative years. There he is, nourished in a kitchen filled with joyous music and regular news-of-the-day debates around the supper table. There he is again, left reeling by a mother’s alcoholism and a father’s unpredictable anger. And again, falling into a deep love sparked by shared wonder for the world, for spirit, for conversation that can be prayer. And there he is, drifting in boats, and in the lonely gulf between himself an age-old world holding trials and wonders and trials again. A young man whose father fought in the war to end all wars and who serves in his own war as a Conscientious Objector. Mature, sober, grateful, graceful and thriving, staring without a blink into generational trauma, the-now-78-year-old poet lifts the curtain on his initial view of the world, on what held him together throughout those years, including a moment he first felt it time “to cast off, give the oars a pull.” You will sit beside him gladly, not caring the destination. —Suzanne Strempek Shea, Author of Sundays in America
Earthen Vessels convinces me that poetry is the native tongue of memoir. Each poem in this very intimate collection is in itself a finished capsule of memory brightened by insight and image, like an intriguing patch; but the whole quilt is something greater than the individual patches. Shaped and disciplined by the intentions of poetic art, Rhodes’s memoir illuminates the interconnected lives of one fallible family through the prism of the younger son’s perception. Earthen Vessels is memoir at its best because it is written with keen intelligence and great love.”—Albert Keller, Professor Emeritus, The Medical University of South Carolina
”In the haunting yet uplifting poems of Earthen Vessels, Steve Rhodes conveys the blessings and challenges of growing up in a family full of strong convictions as well as painful contradictions. Not only in tender moments, but in blunt encounters with harsh truths, he invites us to dig deeper into each story, not only to understand what lies beneath each experience, but to present us with the possibilities inherent in compassion. His writing invites us to remember, understand, and forgive our parents, siblings, and not least of all, ourselves.”—Caroline Gooden, Ph. D., Educational Psychologist