What do you think?
Even As We Speak--Selected Poems
Even As We Speak reveals layers of meaning in the language we use to communicate with and confuse each other; to share our feelings and hide them at the same time; to embark on a task in hope and collapse under systems and instructions gone awry. Murphy often rules this world ("If something can go wrong, it will!"), and Susan Rawlins catalogs the glorious disarray in her witty, distinctive voice.
120 pages, Paperback
First published November 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 26, 2014
These poems are about life, multi-facetted and beautiful. They touch on human relationships, in all their complexity, angst, joy, and humour.
Susan has a wonderful eye for seeing things as they are, and relating them. From the tales (tails?) of a very special dog to love, profound and tender, she shows deep insight, a sense of humour that will make you laugh without ever being mean, and an ability to capture emotion that will leave you breathless.
Her use of italics is masterful: to convey that little bit more, that extra insight, that slightly different take on things that makes her poems unique.
I laughed at her gleefully mischievous descriptions in some poems, and swallowed against the lump in my throat at the tenderness she conveyed in others.
Susan has a wonderful eye for seeing things as they are, and relating them. From the tales (tails?) of a very special dog to love, profound and tender, she shows deep insight, a sense of humour that will make you laugh without ever being mean, and an ability to capture emotion that will leave you breathless.
Her use of italics is masterful: to convey that little bit more, that extra insight, that slightly different take on things that makes her poems unique.
I laughed at her gleefully mischievous descriptions in some poems, and swallowed against the lump in my throat at the tenderness she conveyed in others.
January 17, 2016
Susan Rawlins, or Ms. Rawlins as we called her in high school lit, inducted questioning teenagers into the joy of reading. Whatever we said would produce a shake of her long hair, a half-turn on her teaching stool as she pondered our way of thinking. Now it is our turn to ponder her words and life in “Even as We Speak.” Autobiographical, these poems portray another side to the woman we revered (at times feared). We read of Willie’s Bar Mitvah (beloved dog incarnate), a brief encounter with baseball (way to go, Pests!), a more lasting relationship with gardening, and no surprise, a love for the printed word – much ado about punctuation and grammar. However they elegantly speak of friends, family, and a husband, who captures the heart of both writer and reader. Stan, the author’s husband, is frequently in conversation (“You never talk to me,” I said. “I’m talking to you,” Stan said, “even as we speak”) and oft reveals the author’s deeper thoughts. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.” These poems poignantly speak of love’s vulnerability:
“We have lost our only love
two or three times,
the baby never born,
parquet floors and heavy table silver
failed to show up as did fame – the flame dies down within
us silent as the ash falls
into murderous metaphor.” (Every Flower Fading).
However her poetry reveals an underlying humor, a humor that carried many of us through unnerving lesson plans (it was the Vietnam War era). My favorites:
“My teacher wanted to be, like Yeats,
a bird poet. He was a dog poet.
I was a car poet (there aren’t
many) for years, and then a dog poet
(a particular dog), and am becoming
that dreaded cliché, a flower poet.
Not, at least, daffodils. And still
a full step better than an out-
in-the-woods-with-ferns-and-
furry creatures-leaves-and-
sunlit-at-last-God poet.” (I Embarrass Myself, But It Could Be Worse).
“A teacher, heart and mind, throughout
my life. No one else could have been
me teaching. I have letters saying
‘Thanks.’ Nice letters. Three
of them.” (This Morning).
Now four. I am thankful that my teacher is a poet.
“We have lost our only love
two or three times,
the baby never born,
parquet floors and heavy table silver
failed to show up as did fame – the flame dies down within
us silent as the ash falls
into murderous metaphor.” (Every Flower Fading).
However her poetry reveals an underlying humor, a humor that carried many of us through unnerving lesson plans (it was the Vietnam War era). My favorites:
“My teacher wanted to be, like Yeats,
a bird poet. He was a dog poet.
I was a car poet (there aren’t
many) for years, and then a dog poet
(a particular dog), and am becoming
that dreaded cliché, a flower poet.
Not, at least, daffodils. And still
a full step better than an out-
in-the-woods-with-ferns-and-
furry creatures-leaves-and-
sunlit-at-last-God poet.” (I Embarrass Myself, But It Could Be Worse).
“A teacher, heart and mind, throughout
my life. No one else could have been
me teaching. I have letters saying
‘Thanks.’ Nice letters. Three
of them.” (This Morning).
Now four. I am thankful that my teacher is a poet.
April 2, 2018
This is an engaging, thoughtful collection. The poems tend to answer the question, what do you say about…. The techniques range from a muted sonnet to what would be prose except for how the lines are printed. The tension that exists in so many poems of this period about whether line breaks mark scansion or are to control the reader’s inflection lurks here. The music of verse contributes little.
Her voice is always present. This is a poet talking to you, explaining what she cares about. The ‘about’ is most often family, father, mother, brothers (no sisters), and celebration of her husband, whom she can rely upon in things big and small. Other important subjects are cars, sketches of other people, language.
One of the richest and most searching poems is about the coexistence of mother and daughter. It begins
who inhabits whom
And which belongs
Without consideration
to the other
But divisions exist within the authors voice as if she is telling you this is what I think of X, but there are the other, sharper perspectives lurking to speak. These divisions appear in ways that remind me of Yeats. Nothing so developed as Crazy Jane mocking the bishop, but a similar feel. As in Yeats, this contrary voice often occurs as a refrain or, here, sometimes in italics.
She offers a witty poem on the complete collapse in contemporary structure among ‘lay’, ‘lie’ and their assorted participles and gerunds so that you sometimes don’t know whether someone is putting something down, is being dishonest, is making to love someone, or merely recumbent.
Literature in the sense of the cannon is alive and well in the mind of this poet, a way to evoke and to analyze experience. In one poem she calls Ophelia “my dear sister.” Not a light thing to say. There is a fine poem contrasting her domestic interest with the literary framework ending in:
the oatmeal boils over, and
Byron does not
Domesticate.
The poems range in — what shall I call it, ‘seriousness’, though that’s a word with conflicting layers of implication, but you know what I mean, — from domestic trivia to rather bitter reflection on death. There is something comforting in the intelligent domesticity of the poems, but a sharp, critical layer waits below.
Her voice is always present. This is a poet talking to you, explaining what she cares about. The ‘about’ is most often family, father, mother, brothers (no sisters), and celebration of her husband, whom she can rely upon in things big and small. Other important subjects are cars, sketches of other people, language.
One of the richest and most searching poems is about the coexistence of mother and daughter. It begins
who inhabits whom
And which belongs
Without consideration
to the other
But divisions exist within the authors voice as if she is telling you this is what I think of X, but there are the other, sharper perspectives lurking to speak. These divisions appear in ways that remind me of Yeats. Nothing so developed as Crazy Jane mocking the bishop, but a similar feel. As in Yeats, this contrary voice often occurs as a refrain or, here, sometimes in italics.
She offers a witty poem on the complete collapse in contemporary structure among ‘lay’, ‘lie’ and their assorted participles and gerunds so that you sometimes don’t know whether someone is putting something down, is being dishonest, is making to love someone, or merely recumbent.
Literature in the sense of the cannon is alive and well in the mind of this poet, a way to evoke and to analyze experience. In one poem she calls Ophelia “my dear sister.” Not a light thing to say. There is a fine poem contrasting her domestic interest with the literary framework ending in:
the oatmeal boils over, and
Byron does not
Domesticate.
The poems range in — what shall I call it, ‘seriousness’, though that’s a word with conflicting layers of implication, but you know what I mean, — from domestic trivia to rather bitter reflection on death. There is something comforting in the intelligent domesticity of the poems, but a sharp, critical layer waits below.
January 20, 2014
Susan's poems are about all the stuff that happens to us humans. Family relationships, encounters with machines, dealings with the medical establishment and other behemoths of industry, parking lots. Sometimes with humor, sometimes with heartbreaking truth telling, and always in a way that stops me for a minute, makes me see something in a new way, gives me an image to take with me.
January 24, 2014
An accessible selection of wise, funny, compassionate and moving poems that revel in language for the sake of clarity.. These poems are rich enough to find new and subtle shades of meaning with each rereading. Surprising and highly recommended.
January 21, 2014
This superb collection of poetry goes from witty to heart-breaking to heart-full with great ease & verve. Language is both its central theme and its triumph. I loved it.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews