Poets and Poems: Susan Lewis and “Zoom”

I step out of the carriage, walk up the steps, and I can already hear the music. I enter through the wide doorway, and the music becomes louder. It is Susan Lewis’s language ball. I’m not sure if it’s a fancy-dress ball or a masquerade; I quickly realized I better be prepared for either, or both. 

It’s called Zoom: Poems, and zoom you will, as you hurtle down made, partially made, and remade hallways of words, metaphors, images, and familiar phrases made unfamiliar by the substitution of expected words with the unexpected. Zoomis a romp, some 57 poems of a romp that confuses, bewilders, and ultimately entertains as you understand what the hostess of the ball is up to. She’s celebrating an honored guest.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry. 

Poetic Voices: Susan Lewis and Shanna Powlus Wheeler

In Heisenberg’s Salon, poet Susan Lewis draws inspiration from a principle of quantum mechanics. In 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) published what is known as his Uncertainty Principle – that in any system, you can’t know a particle’s exact location and exact velocity at the same time. You can exactly know one or the other, but not both at the same time.

This idea of uncertainty is what Lewis develops in 54 prose poems – but not applied to quantum mechanics. Instead, she considers uncertainty in relationships, in human actions, in human thought, our perceptions, and how we understand the world.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Susan Lewis

   

Prose poetry isn’t as easy as it might look. I didn’t realize what tight control it can require until reading three recently published works by poet Susan Lewis, two of which are prose poetry and one of which is the more familiar verse style.

Lewis is an accomplished poet, having published numerous collections and chapbooks, including Animal Husbandry, Commodity Fetishism, The Following Message and At Times Your Lines. With the space of roughly a year, she published three years, two collections and a chapbook, and these are three I’ve recently read: How to Be Another, State of the Union and This Visit. Her poetry has been published in numerous literary journals and poetry publications.

The poetry in the three collections has a broad range of subjects – commercialism, food, environmental issues, language, relationships, top mention only a few – but each of the volumes reflects a similar voice, a voice utilizing an observant eye and an air of authority.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poetic Voices: Susan Lewis and Katherine Hoerth

The two poetic voices featured today come at poetry from decidedly different directions. Susan Lewis, in How to be Another, exclusively uses the prose poem form, while Katharine Hoerth centers her poems in Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots in a specific geographic region.

Lewis is the author of several other collections of poetry, including Animal Husbandry (2008), State of the Union (2013), and This Visit (2014). In How to be Another, her exclusive use of the prose poem form for the 70 poems in the collection gives the volume an almost news documentary feel, as she considers all of the facets of relationships.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.