Shepherd's Hour

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>2023 Ohio Poet of the Year Rikki Santer's new poetry collection </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Shepherd's Hour </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>showcases Santer's poetic virtuosity as it explores her cultural inheritance as a Jewish woman raised in the mid 20th century in America's heartland. How to pasture where I'm from? Santer asks gathering idiosyncratic family stories personal and historic instances of anti-Semitism weighing the poet's veganism against the meat-laden cuisine of European Jewry delighting in the expressiveness of Yiddish and achievements of Chagall. Winner of the Paul Nemser Prize from the Lily Poetry Foundation </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Shepherd's Hour </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>pinpoints the intersection of history culture and geopolitics facing Jews in America today. Witty elegiac ironic clear-eyed and at times defiant this book holds fast to what it uncovers: Praise faith declares Santer that defies gravity our most ancient language. </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Bonnie Proudfoot author of the novel </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Goshen Road</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Household Gods</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> poems.</span></p><p></p><p></p>