Susan Blanshard

Fragments of the Human Heart: Collected Poems and Essays Susan Blanshard First edition

A fragment is a splinter of memory caused by interactions with actual conditions: love, passion, sex, death, birth, intimacy; Such things secretly engrave themselves on all four corners of ones mind; a hundred million thoughts connecting words as one could understand another; where pages of poetry, can be read like sensual text for the initiated. Intoxicated in a garden nameless and eternal. As fragments each is complete in itself, as two sides of a leaf or a blade of grass. As external conditions change the soul changes as well. Intimacy touching the lines of text. No sooner is a poem written ; it transforms into a page, which becomes a larger page. No one writes in isolation. Hearts set adrift since the day of birth. The bone and mountains separating people into distinct regions. Your tears contain others tears as well. Still intact, un-melted. The fragments of the human heart continue to be written until they fill an entire book.