A Smell of Burning Starts the Day
Wesleyan University Press, 1988

Out of print

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This volume of poems has the extraordinary richness of personal observation, informed by the knowledge of the historian, and colored by the moral and political responses of a true poet. — Marion K. Stocking, Beloit Poetry Journal

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This poetry is full, confident, hard at work. Susan Tichy seems infused with power and able to tackle any difficult political subject. –Sandra McPherson

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The great-grandniece of a soldier who was part of the occupying U.S. army in command of the Tarlac Province of the Philippines at the turn of the century, Tichy translates the specific circumstances of Filipinos during the Insurrection and its aftermath into universally accessible verse. With chilling clarity, she depicts a people of courage and restraint. Sensitively but never sentimentally, she tells their stories of then and now, adding her own while visiting Tarlac in 1985 [in the last year of the Marcos regime]. The poems, which often include dialogue and resemble prose, are relentlessly direct: many of the voices speak in the second person, while the narrator, the “I,” questions, criticizes and reveals with the innocence and persistence of a child.  —Publisher’s Weekly

6 Poems from A Smell of Burning Starts the Day

Cover by Kachergis Book Design, from photos by Susan Tichy