In these tender and searing poems Rachel Bunting explores the landscape of relationship, the gates through which we admit our truest feelings or shut them away. Moving from girlish infatuation sullied by uncaring sex, through the vulnerability of schoolchildren, to the trials of parenting and marriage, she opens the surface of love and friendship to show how they may braid or blur, offering redemption. We climb with her on a ladder of precise, surprising language from loss to a place of watchfulness and hope in this moving, thoughtful collection.
The first line of Ripe Again asserts, "You know everything," then the book unfurls its banner of discoveries. As the title implies, there is a movement herein, from the first section (the relationships we're supposed to revere) to the second (acknowledging the work -sometimes untenable- to sustain them), and finally the third (the real ripening, even "in the grip now of the world's giant fist"). Rachel Bunting, with this remarkable first book, announces herself with stunning noise - inspired sounds that gave rise to deep and fulfilling silence in me. There are real pleasures in every poem.