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​Saunier's art is crafted with subtle midline rhymes and assonance, and with thoughtful diction. She delivers her stanzas in free verse, many with innovative approaches. A striking and rewarding aspect of Wheel occurs when we encounter Saunier's four "Wheel" poems. They appear at the beginning and end as well as interspersed within the volume. It is these poems that bring delightful cohesion... and turn the collection itself into a "cycling through." We recognize lines from a previous wheel poem; thus, we feel we've experienced the movement of time—as if we, too, have passed through a season and given a nod to the beauty along the path.
--World Literature Today
...a truly fine assemblage of poetry that will reward the reader with a better understanding of the best, worst, and in-betweens of life. And in gaining that understanding the reader will also find delight in the sounds, the skillful use of language, and the understated poeticism on every page.
-Broadkill Review
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Hayden Saunier’s A Cartography of Home is another breathtaking example of what this poet does best: crafting sensuous language, weaving together word play and close observation.
--Philadelphia Stories
Saunier’s clear-sighted vision is perhaps the tonic we need for a healthier world. --Pedestal Magazine
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"These beautiful poems create a heightened awareness of how all things are connected. From the people who came before us, whether they built our physical house or built our family, to the natural world—dirt, sky, sun, moon, trees, coyotes, seasons, horses, fruit, flowers. It is all there for the taking; we have only to look for it."
--The Compulsive Reader
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Why read poems in the midst of a pandemic? I go to poetry for a naked view of humankind: our cruelties, our quirks and kindness, our capacity for change. That’s here, in all the homes Saunier inhabits. The first piece invites the reader to join her at a table made of salvaged wood, “spalted through with hard luck, grease/disease, fat streaks of amber jam/…Sit down and eat.” Say yes. You’ll be well fed. -The Broad Street Review
These are poems that demand to be reread, not because there is anything difficult or obscure about them, but because, like gemstones in just the right light at just the right angle, they sparkle so magically.
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-The Philadelphia Inquirer
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...the poems’ serious contemplation of mortality and wilderness binds them together and makes them as important as any you’ll read this year.
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-Broad Street Review
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The interconnectedness of everything on earth, how we belong to it all, how permeable boundaries are between us and the natural world, how things sing and what they sing of are rendered with aching acuity. Whether a poem’s focus shines on a “rump sprung sofa,” a turkey vulture, or dazzling autumn trees described as “sugar maple drama queens,” even evanescence becomes rich and luminous in these poems. This is a gorgeous, precise and deeply graceful collection.
--Amy Gerstler
“Hayden Saunier is a poet of wit, irony, and a huge generosity of heart. Her voice is wise, deep, and resonant with wonder variations in tone, technique, and an attention to the line that gives her poems the sort of full and memorable body you hope for when you open a new wine that carried a curious and somewhat haunting label.”
--Laure-Anne Bosselaar, from the Foreword, SAY LUCK
“In these lucid and intriguing elegies, at the cold heart of calamity, there is a calm. This calm, a kind of wisdom, does not so much console as teach us that in the face the tragic one cannot help, at least for some time, to remain inconsolable. You will find, in spite of what I have just said, that these poems are funny and humane, sharpened by Saunier’s razor-edged wit. She tunes these poems with a keen ear and perfected pitch for the music of the American language. This is a breathtaking and stunning debut.”
--Eric Pankey
Saunier's takes on the classics are refreshingly irreverent... There's plenty of grit to match the sparkle on display here....
-The Philadelphia Inquirer
...like any remarkable book, offers good company for the long distances we must travel. It helps us to face what must be faced.”
--Christopher Bursk
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Anthologies:
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Keystone Poetry: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania
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Braving the Body
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100 Contemporary American Self-Portrait Poems
coffee and chocolate poems
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