Poetry
Susan Tepper’s
New Poetry Release
”Confess”
In the poems comprising her newest collection, Susan Tepper is elegiac and lyrical (…a lake I carry on my back/one of stillness), often contemplating winter and its darkness with the necessary intervention of birds, foods, and the mysteries of human relationships—your arms hold secrets. And now and then a tough humor shines a light as well (Bury me in a giant keg—I’m lonely.) One feels her physical and inner landscape acutely, and one has to confess that heres’s a poet who really knows, to the bone, how breathing in the stories is done to the benefit of us all.
—Tim Suermondt, author of Josephine Baker Swimming Pool
There is an extreme sense of intimacy in the poems of Susan Tepper. You can literally feel on the scrim of your skin her engagements with her senses—the natural order of things. She is no ham-fisted poet, but brings a subtle, dark beauty, like a trail of deep blue. She is in constant conversation with the world, and only a poet who is deeply in tune to herself, and the signs the universe sends us, can bring this accomplished work to the plate. —Doug Holder/Ibbetson Street Press/Lecturer in Creative Writing, Endicott College
Susan Tepper’s book of poetry, CONFESS, is a handful of pearls in a hand extended as a gift bearing opalescent light, specks of muted colors, sometimes questioning who we are in shaping our destiny, and what escapes from our dark corners, as in her poem “Course”:…the heart meets itself, blankly, hears its name in the crumpled page… in “Egg” a beam creaks, mindful in the quiet of the passage of time. There still exists in “Part & Parcel” Two suitcases, side by side/have yet to be unpacked, and in “Each Sky” Tepper plucks from the ever changing sky her keen perception of what is a visual poem. —Judith Lawrence, Lilly Press. editor/publisher
ON A DAY OF QUIET RAIN
By Susan Isla Tepper
Do nothing the prophets
whisper
awake and while sleeping
the yellowed pages
curling almost to dust
You come upon
a meditation garden
purely by accident on a day
of quiet rain
And there was Jesus, himself
pictured on placards
lined up, golden, filigreed:
attached to wooden poles
in the ground
beginning with The Last Supper.
They had taken a beating from weather.
Violetta by Marie Lynam Fitzpatrick
The Colors of Rain – Photo by Judith A. Lawrence
DESIROUS by Susan IslaTepper
Your heart envies its factions
choruses of deliverance
that keep failing
despite a clutching effort
to hold intact what is left
the slightest drop of good will
You are your own prisoner
desirous of this place
your cries for help go rigid
in a black-tinged scarlet night
tongue of nights that pass over
any light that could be cast
by a new moon
Published in The Linnet's Wings summer 2019 issue Broom Bridge Totem
APRIL IS POETRY MONTH IN LIMERICK, IRELAND
"Course" was posted on the outside of GOLDEN GRILL Restaurant, 8 William Street, Limerick, Ireland
Susan Tepper’s poetry is honest, filled with original insights that enrich the reader. Her lyrics are taut and moving, and a joy to read. She is to be welcomed among the most accomplished poets writing today.
— Simon Perchik
The collection has an elegant focus and hush around it...
— Timothy Donnelly, Boston Review
Susan Tepper is a poet of quiet grace yet insistent power, who steals your mind’s focus in odd moments long after you’ve laid down her book.
— Don Williams,
New Millennium Writings & Syndicated Columnist
Susan Tepper...on the page, shimmers through everyday thoughts, bringing life to streams and smoke and snow. Her gentle vision beautifully informs her well-crafted poems in “Blue Edge.”
— Suzi Winson, Fish Drum
Readers of Grasslimb will be familiar with Susan Tepper’s fine poetry... We can enthusiastically recommend this fine further exploration of her work.
— Valerie Polichar, Grasslimb