It’s time I tell Susan what I think. I had no idea her book was out until she told me, and now that I’ve been dipping into it I have a few words, myself. It’s like I have a little bit of her here—her gentleness, her pained and joyous eye for this world, her mystery, the pungency in her voice. Reading, I’m pulled up short, jolted. Sometimes I’m baffled to no end.

She starts a lengthy piece, “Boston,” like this: I hope you see / all you busy bussy fucky cars / all you honkey-tonk grey-stiped people / all you worn-out washed-out nature / all you trashy crimey alleys / I hope you all see / that here I am / and I will do the same / for you.

Could there be a more lucid view, one taken by a non inhabitant, avoider of cities? Her love for the rural—the native, the primeval—imbues Susan’s every sight.

What to make, I wonder, of “Transformation”? I have seen purses made of swans’ feet and salmon skin / parkas made of seal intestines / Two-hundred pound fish with both eyes on top of their heads / clubbed into submission . . . Finally, at the poem’s close, she says she’s back in Appalachia now, haunted, trying to digest. So am I.

“Tree People,” though. The clarity stuns. When they took down her grandfather, says Susan, leaving a mountainside of stumps, the wildlife went hungry. A soup was made of his fingers earlobes arms, which got squeezed flat and dry. “The paper you are holding in your hands,” she writes, “is my grandfather’s skin.” So it is, Susan, so it is. Closely I guard these scraps.

Susan Thayer Haydel, Trailing Fog, 2023

 


 

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