“While mastering classical poetry, Theresa Rodriguez expresses the deepest emotions: she reigns whether settings are in the past or present, leaving us in awe.”

—Carol Smallwood, interviewer, editor, literary judge; author of Patterns: Moments in Time (Word Poetry, 2019)

“In her Longer Thoughts, Theresa Rodriguez has brandished courage of both craft and compassion. Readers who appreciate poetry as crystallizations of conscience will delight in this collection's slate of sonnets as well as a rondeau, a triolet, and a villanelle. Among her elegies, the ode to Quasimodo struck me particularly, elevating Victor Hugo's fictional creation to the firmament alongside the saints and martyrs of her other verses. Juggling themes of love, God, pain, beauty, mortality, and creativity itself, the music in these musings bridges the sacred, the sacrosanct, and the secular, sometimes in a single stanza. These longer thoughts betray the soulful ministrations of a "priestess warrior of words"—and what vehicle for this could be better than a new collection from Shanti Arts?”

— James B. Nicola, Out of Nothing: Poems of Art and Artists (Shanti Arts, 2018)

 

“Theresa Rodriguez's Longer Thoughts is an insightful dive into the poet's longings for introspection, the right words, and peace. Rodriguez has a clear appreciation for formal poetry, the boundaries within which she is unafraid to play. While some poems are a pure delight, others are deep and provocative.”

—Katy Comber, Co-Founder of Creative Light Factory Writers' Room; Editor and Host of Affinity CoLab Presents

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"Theresa Rodriguez takes us on a wonderful walk through the forest of her intellect, which is replete with rich and meaningful scenes and fulfilling movement crossing from poems about J.S. Bach to the persecution of Falun Gong in China to dealing with Insomnia. There is in all of it a sense of palpable pain vividly painted in introspective lines such as

'...To mull
About within and come up vacant. Try
I might but efforts are in vain. My words
Seem plastic, or ephemeral, trite, dry,
No meaning - or I've lost them. All this girds
My faculties to action, but to naught.'
("Writer's Block")

And yet, greater than the lines of pain, and what makes this a truly a great work, is the sense of a brighter and more powerful sacredness in life that always seems to loom near. It is both comforting and edifying, leaving a sense of fertility and resilience as in the lines:

'Within my world there is a sacred place,
Where I can hide and then reveal my heart;
Where thoughts and feelings go, and become art;
It is a sanctuary, hallowed space.'
("My Journal")

This is a space worth joining Ms. Rodriguez in."

-- Evan Mantyk, President, Society of Classical Poets