Susanna Styve •

Miscellaneous Tender

Susanna Styve's first book of poetry, Miscellaneous, Tender, invites us into the private, sometimes lonely, world of an only child, offering comfort to those who grew up as only children, and challenging others to plunge down the rabbit hole of surprise. Styve's prose poems create a fast-moving narrative, ranging from the serious to the light-hearted. The book moves lightly with wit and wry humor.

Praise for Miscellaneous Tender

Styve's compact prose poems embody Richard Hugo's dictum, "Get in, get in your licks, get out." By turns leisurely, brusque (abrupt even), lyrical, dreamy, and wry, the poems are a prism, refracting shifting human relationships. The mathematical variations of ones, twos, and even a few threes weave through the book as theme, image, and pleasure. — Roseann Lloyd, author of Because of the Light: Poems (Holy Cow! Press)

About Susanna

Susanna Styve received an M.F.A. in creative writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her work has been selected for inclusion in Good Poems, for Hard Times, an anthology of poems edited by Garrison Keillor from works heard on Writer’s Almanac.

Family Dog

The family dog is to be visited. He must wait at the old home

for the children to come back on holidays, laundry visits, to fix

the computer, to introduce their betrotheds, etc. He's to be

cried over when the call comes to say that he is dead. He is to

represent the past, a token of childhood, a comforting back to

scratch when you move home post-heartbreak. This is the role

of the family dog.

From MIscellaneous Tender, by Susanna Styve

Susanna on Writing Poetry

I know that when I write well it is out of some instinctual place where the words feel like they fall out of the blue sky. I also know that I only write well when I am doing the drudgery work of just writing whenever I get the chance.

From The Double Meaning of Yield: Laurel Poets on Writing Poetry