In this thoughtful and provocative collection of essays, Suzanne Gardinier painstakingly and passionately examines the intersection of poetry and politics. Not a miscellany but a cohesive and beautifully crafted book, the six essays (on Pablo Neruda, Muriel Rukeyser, Rainer Maria Rilke, Adrienne Rich, the Iliad, Poetry and the New Commonwealth, and In Search of Democracy) are united in their love of language, their unsparing but hopeful social criticism, and their genuine affection for their subjects.
Astute, engaged and engaging, A World That Will Hold All the People (the title comes from the Margaret Walker poem, For My People) provides one side of what Rukeyser termed The endless quarrel between the establishment and the prophets. Accompanying her provocative essays is a prose poem, This Land.
Suzanne Gardinier’s book of poetry The New World was published in 1993. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry annual, The New Yorker, Grand Street, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and The Yale Review. She teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.