Riptide : New and Selected Poems

Award-winning poet Enid Shomer’s new and selected poems explore the many facets of womanhood, from youthful desire to life’s later stages.

In Riptide, Shomer’s poems, written over the last forty years, illuminate the nature of being—whether human or kudzu—“this / headlong rush, this stammer / of green, this slow / stampede toward light.” Elegant lyrics, anchored in her beloved Florida landscape, use stunning imagery to convey Shomer’s rapturous engagement with the natural world. Longer sequences showcase narrative and formal dexterity while deftly bringing historical personae to life in poems such as “Pope Joan.” New poems powerfully examine mortality and sensuality as experienced in an aging body.

With lush music and deeply spiritual attention, Shomer’s work transforms the mundane into the numinous. Now in her early eighties, Shomer is still at the top of her form.