Judith Sanders

These are poems of magical linguistic power and penetrating social insight. They deserve to find their way to a multitude of readers, including those who might not yet know that they need them to survive.

–Elizabeth Muther, Bowdoin College

Unless called by its right name, the world will be lost, Judith Sanders implies in this brilliant debut collection: “Will we remember this/ cascade of bare branches/ if we cannot now/ find its name?” And charged with this task, the poems go about defining the world. Sanders’ observations are accurate, musical, and precise.

—Michael Simms, author of American Ash and Nightjar; Founder and Editor emeritus, Autumn House Press; Founder and Editor, Vox Populi

I enjoyed this book so much that I was sorry when it was over. Sanders shifts deftly among registers of language, from the satirical—“The Lay of Judith the Cricket Killer”—to the heartfelt and unguarded—“I Wanted to Be the Beatles”—to the laugh-out-loud funny. Sometimes, as in “Today I Am Writing in Polish,” opposing tones are combined in a way that intensifies both the emotion and the pleasure. Wherever these wide-ranging poems travel, they plunge in deep.

—Linda Bamber, author of Metropolitan Tang: Poems and Taking What I Like: Stories, Tufts University

Judith Sanders’ poems are, like borscht itself, hearty, flavorful, and nourishing. Her dynamic book is a recipe for delight. It lyrically traverses family, memory, fields of knowledge, and locales near and far. 

—Sharon Fagan McDermott, author of Life Without Furniture and co-author of Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life

The images in The Universe with Borscht leap off the page, and sizzle with life and buoyant energy. This is a book you will want to keep with you as a reminder that there can be joy amid disillusion, and poetry is the elixir that, as Sanders writes, can “fix the broken world / that keeps on breaking.”

—Robert Walicki, author of Fountain and Watershed

Sanders’ details are so vividly drawn that they seem to blink back at you. Even her darkest poems are utterly delicious. She invites us to cruise through daily miracles, concerning herself with the “mundane embedded in sublime and/or vice versa” so consistently that it has become her trademark. 

—M. C. Benner Dixon, author of The Height of Land and co-author of Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life