Suzanne Edison, MA, MFA

Poet • Educator

Poems

Poetry helps me find “the place beyond words.” We poets use words to point ourself and others toward those ineffable places. When this water of 'being' is running through me, I write for the joy of participating and the hope of learning something new. If my words then touch others I am rewarded a second time.

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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..

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Birth and Death

The vernal equinox. Rebirth. Spring. Resurrection. Flight from Egypt to the promised land. 10th anniversary of the Iraq “War” (invasion). 19th anniversary of my mother’s death.

In honor of all this. In honor of the cycles of creation and destruction to which we are all subject. In deference to all the writers, artists, poets, great orators, quiet spiritualists who speak of our place in the Great Cycles of Creation. In all the forms we know through, and by, I offer a poem.  (Originally published as Remains in Seattle Woman magazine, 2004)

What Remains

Burrowing
into mother’s pillow

I inhale
a curry of wet leaves, dried

roses, an absence,
like chilies lingering,

the tongue
no longer afire.

I dream of gulls
piercing a crushed silk sea,

a litter of urchins
lashed wave upon wave,

their empty bodies
crumbs

the beach holds
rising.

Awake, like a mouse
in hawk’s sight

my sand papered skin
longs for cover—a tapestry

jacquared with moss
and flame leaves—

for rain to fill my fluted
bones, picked clean..

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Finding solace in poetry-Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition

As a result of my KUOW interviews in late January, a wonderful organization in California was made aware of my work and contacted me.  The Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition wanted to feature some of my poems on their website.

I am honored to be asked and they have recently posted Teeter Totter, a poem I wrote a few months after my daughter was diagnosed with Juvenile Myositis and was exhibiting all the classic Cushingnoid signs (moon face, bloating, irritability to name a few) due to heavy doses of corticosteroids.

I think the mission and vision of chpcc dovetail with my sense of what’s needed for families who have children with serious health issues.  Check them out.

Mission: Listen to, partner with, and work together for children with serious illnesses and all those who care for them.

Vision: We believe that all children with life-threatening conditions should have access to the care and emotional support they need to live life as fully as possible.

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Interview with Steve Scher on KUOW-2013

This morning, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, I was a guest on KUOW’s Weekday program with Steve Scher talking about writing and healing. For those of you who didn’t get to hear the show, you can go to the website and hear the podcast.

I will reiterate my basic messages here.

1) When children are sick, the whole family is affected.

2) Parents go through many stages of grief and loss, similar to stages of death and dying, on their journey with an ill child.
3) Using the arts, in this case writing, as a form of healing allows us to both feel our experience and learn to think without denying those feelings. The act of creation is both a way to re-energize our “wellsprings” and an opportunity to make sense and/or meaning out of our experiences.                                          

Also, I didn’t get a chance to completely make a pitch for my writing workshop at Seattle Children’s Hospital, called Writing as a Righting Journey, so I want to do that here.  This workshop is open to any parent with a child living with ongoing health issues. You do not have to be a writer, no experience needed. It is free. Please contact me for more information.

And if you want to read more of the poems that have come from my interviews/conversations with parents, please go to the online store here, to purchase a copy of What Cannot Be Swallowed.   Tune in on Wednesday, Jan. 30th to KUOW between 2-3 pm to hear 2 of these poems..