Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

  • Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA
  • Home
  • About
    • Resumé
    • Contact
  • Blog
    • Poems
  • Teaching & Consulting
    • Events & Workshops
    • Testimonials
  • Resources
  • Poetry
    • Poems-Acknowledgements of Publication
    • Poetry Books

January 24, 2015 By Suzanne

Reading Trisha Ready in The Stranger-Music, Healing, Cancer & More

I want to make a plug for reading Trisha Ready’s article in The Stranger from last week. It is a brilliant piece of writing about healing from cancer with music, and fighting against the pronouncements of Susan Sontag in her book Illness as Metaphor.  

While I have not had cancer, I have read Sontag’s book, and recently, a few others on the topic of Language, Metaphor and Writing about Illness and I think Ready does considerable work in articulating the medical aspects, choices and limitations of allopathic medicine along with the possibilities, and need for, less traditional forms of healing.

I am not ready to post my own essay on the topic of language, illness and healing, as I have it out for consideration of publication, but I hope to be able to offer it soon.  In the meantime, read Ms. Ready!.

Filed Under: literature review, other writers

August 17, 2013 By Suzanne

The Art of Losing

I highly recommend a book of poetry edited by Kevin Young called The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing.
The title is from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem One Art. I got a hardback version at a book closeouts website through Amazon (forgive me independent bookstore lovers) for about $8 + shipping.

I want to quote Kevin’s opening lines in his introduction as a way to bring you into wanting to also get the book.
“I have begun to believe in, and even preach, a poetry of necessity. This is a recognition not just of the necessity of poetry to our lives, but also the fact that necessity is what drives most of the poetry that matters, or the way that it matters.” And, “a poem must be willing to be unwilled, beckoned by need.”

And this book is filled with poems driven by need: elegies, remembrances, dedications, words that attempt to point towards the things that are often unspeakable, or seemingly feel that way.  I love the way I am drawn to think about other forms of art, painting and music, as I read different poems. I thought about Ad Reinhart and his seemingly monochromatic paintings in all black and all red. They beg us to be absorbed into them, by them. They seem to hover around those “almost unspeakable realities” and yet, we keep trying to find the words and images, sounds and visuals to express our ineffable lives.

The Art of Losing is a remarkable compilation of poets living and dead, from W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton to Dean Young, Robert Hass, Lucille Clifton, Adam Zagajewski, just to name a few. And there are so many, many more.  For what greater mysteries are there than death, love and living.

As William Faulkner is quoted in the opening section called Reckoning:

Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

Theodore Roethke says in the section, Recovery:

I learn by going where I have to go.

And finally, Philip Larkin opens the last section, Redemption with:

What will survive of us is love..

Filed Under: Art & Writing, literature review, other writers, poetry Tagged With: grief, healing, poetry, writing

May 14, 2013 By Suzanne

A case for writing about children with chronic and/or terminal illness: from a parent and poet’s perspective

A-mother-with-a-sick-chil-001

Writing and talking about our children with chronic illness is a difficult topic for many of us. For too long this topic was whispered about, pity and fear being the prevailing feelings of those who have typically developing and healthy kids.  But those of us who have children living with chronic and/or life threatening illnesses are learning to speak out about our lives and experiences.  And I for one, think it is healthy and important to expand the conversation about not only “acceptable” topics of discussion and art but also about the enormous role that health and illness play in our economy and society at large. If we can’t speak, listen and discuss these issues, we can’t affect change in them either.

Since this is a big topic, let me start small and personal. Here is an article by Maria Kefalas about her life with a terminally ill child, one of three children.  She has profound insights about mothering in general.  These are some of the frequently cited “silver linings” that many of us come to learn when we have a child with an ongoing health challenge and is an important piece of the dialogue between all families, not just ones with special needs kids.

Emily Rapp, whose son Ronan recently died from Tay-Sachs disease, has written extensively about her journey with her son. Most recently she wrote an article about writing about grief, pain and loss itself. As a writer, she has had to negotiate that line between raw, undigested feelings, catharsis and transforming feelings into art, again, making the case that we need to not only express and channel these feelings, but in so doing, we enlarge society’s understanding of the human condition.

This past week I read some of my poems to an unfamiliar audience in a local library reading series. These included poems about my journey, and others I’ve met and interviewed who are parenting a child with a chronic illness.  The room was silent, not even an “ahh”, or a sigh could be heard during some of the usually more painful passages.  Laughter though, was expressed in “appropriate” moments.  I was struck by the difference in this audience from others.  Were they more shy?  More embarrassed, taken by surprise?  Hard to know.  I know the material is powerful, provocative and that I read it clearly and straight forwardly. A comment by an unknown audience member afterward, who had a hard time expressing his feelings but wanted to let me know he “felt” for me, made me think that when the material is painful, most people don’t know how to respond.  This was not true of my audience at a local children’s hospital or even among a large group of nursing students.  But those audiences are more “schooled” in illness and the emotional effects of it on families.

In the book Writing and Healing: Toward an Informed Practice,  essays about the need for, and success of, integrating personal narratives about traumatic experiences in creative writing programs are explored. I find this heartening, it is a way to build emotional intelligence and muscles in our future readers and listeners.  Here is a quick outline of the book:

“We expect poets to craft art from suffering, but do we allow ourselves or our students to go this route? In this new book Charles Anderson and Marian MacCurdy compile 15 essays written by and for writing teachers and others who have experienced or would like to encourage writing and healing in a variety of settings, classrooms, substance-abuse treatment centers, AIDS support groups, and elsewhere throughout our communities.The essays explore particular writing practices and present theories that support writing as a way to approach and understand difficult situations, such as grief, death, and illness.

The editors recognize and address the conflicts inherent in promoting expressive writing and argue convincingly for the inclusion of personal and political concerns in the writing classroom or other settings. Writing and Healing provides a unique occasion for teachers, scholars, and other professionals to begin an open, serious conversation about the healing power of writing.”

A friend, well known poet and MacArthur Fellow, Heather McHugh, recently started an organization called Caregifted, to give long term caregivers a respite from their ongoing, life path of caring for chronically ill or special needs children.  Her understanding about the societal impact of special needs children and their caregivers is acute and based on a relationship she has with a godson and his special needs child.  Her take on the need for compassion and understanding is this: “Compassion? useless without practicum.”

But how do we move towards action if our capacity for feeling and thinking about these issues is stunted? How do we begin to talk about the issues if we have not read or listened to others discussing the impacts of life threatening or chronic illness on families?  It is to these points that I say, we can’t. We must write and speak out. We must learn to tell our stories, to imbue the personal narrative with a larger political and social perspective. This is one reason why I teach a writing workshop for parents who have a child living with ongoing health needs.

We also know that families of a special needs child face greater economic challenges. If they have insurance, they are lucky. If not, the rest of society supports them with emergency room visits and probably less compliance with health routines and further degradation of health, which in turn puts more burden on a taxed health system. Then if the mother or primary caretaker is depressed or isolated because of her caretaking role, often times adherence to health needs of the child can be unseen or ignored, in turn, leading to poorer outcomes and the need for intervention for the child. It becomes a downward spiral.

We must understand that by writing, reading, listening to or seeing stories about ALL the ramifications of health and health needs, about trauma and its psychological, social and economic impacts, can enlarge our capacities as humans to care.  As Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron believes:  […when] we are encouraged to simply look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies.  We learn that what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.”  And then hopefully, learning to bear these feelings helps us to broaden our actions..

Filed Under: essays, literature review, other writers

Events & Workshops

The Words To Say It: Reading and Writing Poems about Illness, Trauma, & Healing

In the Time of Virus–Part 2–Writing Workshop

Writing as a Righting Journey-San Francisco/Oakland–2020

SEE MORE

Recent Posts

Pain Talk

February 6, 2021

Poetry, the pandemic, healing and medicine–Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine

November 1, 2020

Neuroscience, Art, & Poetry

November 1, 2020

After Remission, Her First Tattoo–poem

June 3, 2020

My Friend Claims Her Second Round of Cancer–poem

May 9, 2020

Follow on Facebook

  • Facebook

Post Categories

Blog Archives

  • Contact Suzanne
  • Connect on Facebook

Copyright © 2021 Suzanne Edison Site by LND · Banner artwork by Leslie Newman