The Rooted Heart

When Sylvia Shom Um was writing the poems that would become this book, whe was embarking on a project that was at once monumentous, delicate, and affirming. Sylvia herself was all these things, and it is our good fortune as readers that she remains tangibly so in the work that survives her. She brought to her project the double gift of a lasting poet: She had the language and the subject, the material and the power to transform it. She told me that the poem "Sick" which begins the sequence specificly about her illness, recovery, and illness again, was a poem that crystallized what she wanted for her work. Powerful in its specificity and its elliptical notations, this poem announces the distance and intimacy of all the poems in _The Rooted Heart_. --excerpted from Barbara Cully's introduction.