Seasoned Woman

The Seasoned Woman, by Andrea Vocab Sanderson, is a testament to time and the turn of the seasons in an unforgiving world where the sacredness of the human body is often forgotten and reduced to a desperate battle with creams and crows' feet, beauty a fugitive running in desperation and the holiness of the "temple carved out of spirit and bones" not reverenced. Such poetic songs of exaltation and resistance as "The Body as Religion" and "Sacred Tongues" evoke the power of "relishing the resplendence of our form", this body-place "enthroned with awe-inspiring wonders." The inherent feminism in this celebration of physicality, of the female body, of the diversity of female lives of significance, and of passion "where the peace and pieces of God rest upon our skin" inspires us to respect the heat of love, to "set the sanctuary on fire", and to revere the "words so sacred I cannot pronounce." The only thing better than reading these poems, is to hear them in Sanderson's own melodically passionate voice. The Seasoned Woman is a gem, and leaves us all standing taller and prouder and more solidly encamped in the sacred temples of our own bodies. - Carmen Tafolla, State Poet Laureate of Texas 2015