Books

Coming soon!

The Other Shoe

Poems

Published by Oakledge Press (Margaret Lucke)

“The poetry in Evie Groch’s The Other Shoe offers an enticing, moving read, with moments to ponder aberrations in the moral universe and conflicts that make us human. It is philosophical and profound. Spiced with a subtle humor, the author’s insightful commentary on the foibles, triumphs of men and women, her stress on the subtleties of nature’s transformations, and her uncanny capture of ambivalences experienced in the immigration process — point to universal themes about coping in a stressful world.

In “A Pail for Blackberries,” for example, Evie symbolizes the loneliness of the immigrant experience through a friendless, toy-less two-year old, who has only “blackberries to pick and taste and hold.” She analyzes well the complexities of Jewish immigrants in America, citing ironic behavior of those not quite willing to expose their identity. Her poems summon a deep dedication to eliminating prejudices.

Groch looks to quiet meditation to make sense of life. She turns to the natural order of things for models of behavior and coping. Nature offers the key to a renewed sense of belonging: simple wild flowers, chameleons in sunlight, violet glass of a sunset. This poet’s remedies succeed in assuring the other shoe will not drop.”

–Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms
Award-winning Poet

“The readers of this book will find deep authenticity and vividness in all the pieces. They are rich and evocative in such a way as to have some universality despite their particularity. The interesting, even challenging, experiences the poet has had in her early life and her embrace and mastery of them have undoubtedly contributed to her breadth, depth, and talent. She addresses time and timelessness and an eventual fading into eternity.

There is the understanding that there is only so much a poet can perceive or capture, given the past’s secrets, but she can be inspired and write ‘what is true to her.’”

–Deborah Silverman
Award-winning Poet

“Evie Groch’s The Other Shoe speaks to a broad humanity and what we share: stages of parenting. The reciprocity of family ties. ‘You were my umlaut,’ she tells her lover; in another poem she says hello to each kind act her spouse performs. Her homage to Anita Brookner’s Falling Slowly unwraps the novel like a gift: ‘what her characters lose / lightens our load.’ Groch’s poems brim with the joy of language, the fun of metaphor, sound, rhyme. When she writes of poetry as ‘a shared / experience forged in empathy,’ she describes her own work: precise, truthful, rich in compassion, and so inclusive, you’ll even find elephants within.”   

—Peggy Turnbull
Poetry Editor, The Solitary Plover
Author of Finding the Warm Breast of Self