unfading Suzanne.

My photos aren’t as magical as yours, Suzanne, but since this post is about you, I felt I had to use my own.

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With some obliquitous regularity, any graphomaniac, any dilettante under the school of words, is bound to think about which space within that school lies vacant for occupancy; what position can we inhabit in order to be visible — not just to others — but also visible to ourselves. When I think of WordPress and how it managed to collect such a magnificently diverse constellation of poets, it is complicated to dispense the thought that WordPress is not a book or a publication, nor is it an amphitheater, nor similar to anything previously responsible for disseminating the Art of Poetry; however, inasmuch as our mediums were shaped by the Art conveyed, so was the Art modified by the mediums it made use of.

I could write an essay on how WordPress changed the modern scope of poetic expression, how the intricate osmosis between various readily-accessible and social poets facilitates a type of distillation of symbols which provides such a rich soundscape, a visual and guttural interactivity reminiscent of older literary circles without the strain of exclusivity. How it manages to contrast so well with some of the corralled, anchorite poetry of yore. But I’m no good at essays, so I shall provide example:

«I often write things
that I fear are not worth reading
so, I tuck them neatly away
fragile thoughts folded in upon themselves
the words fade and the pages yellow
as a memory floats into view.»

Suzanne, Tucked Away

Suzanne is, in my earnest vision, one of the maximum exponents in regards to blog-formed poetry; her diary-shaped thoughts, intimate and percolated through filters of naturalism and sentimental realism, act as a spatter of light over large sheets of luminous blue taffeta; her poems, thronged with both unbridled lyricism and the closeness of a tryst with emotions, exist as imponent bridges between the I living and the I creating, and fit the medium of WordPress so meticulously that I truly couldn’t imagine them anywhere else, feeling almost carved from the stone itself from which this community was made. She exists as a siren of fortitude, a wondrous being that does not resist the churning and turning of days, but slithers through them, collecting what in them means most, and touches most.

«One needn’t have an hourglass
To forever turn
And so command the moments
Within your heart to always burn
*
As the minutes and the hours fall
Joy and sorrow, both therein
We seek to collect them each around us
In a vain attempt to hold too many all at once
It is a fearful thing, this holding
And we begin to suffer from the force of it»

Suzanne, If You Have a Heart To Love.

There is an immense talent in creating denotation without it feeling overly astringent, Art which I’m yet to master and often couldn’t feel more distant of doing so. Suzanne, however, manages not only that, but also a verse structure that unfurls extemporaneously, with a tune unchained of truisms but still intimately open, so that all of us can drink from it without muddying the pool. Still, it fiddles with the perennial depths of human experience, it does not shy from agonic draws, it does not shy from pain or the cruel beauty of that pain. It is not deceptively positive or stylistically negative, it’s intimate and… experienced, truthful to a point of combustion, a signature of gentility inconceivable to the isolated, selves-within-themselves type of creators such as I, but one I’m endlessly grateful for having discovered, and I urge you strenuously to do the same, if you have not.

«Time doesn’t stand still for questions or answers. They are worth wondering over though. There are places and people who do make a difference, even when they don’t know that they do. A single bowl of soup may not feed the world. But, it may open someone’s heart to a lifetime of wondering.»

Suzanne, Live Your Story

Thank you, Suzanne,
you’ve been such a beautiful element of my journey,
João-Maria.