Suzanne Swanson • House of Music

In the signature poems of House of Music, Suzanne Swanson writes landscapes of the heart, mind, and body that — no matter what their subject matter — have an undertone that is at once confident and dreamlike. These poems feel like visitations and manifest themselves as gifts: underneath everything else, they seem to say, our lives really are houses for music. Because the poems are hard-won, the gift feels real.

Praise for House of Music

Life's difficulties are acknowledged and more than acknowledged in these poems, but their feeling of astonished gratitude is what I most appreciate. I find myself returning to them, as if perhaps I somehow got it wrong: but, no, these poems are very much for real and wills stay right where they are, to be returned to again and again. — Jim Moore, author of Lightning at Dinner (Graywolf Press, 2005)

About Suzanne

Suzanne Swanson works as a psychologist in St. Paul, Minnesota, specializing in pregnancy, postpartum, and mothering issues. In 1997 Suzanne was awarded a Loft Mentor Award in Poetry. She has been published in many literary journals, most recently Water~Stone. Her newest chapbook is titled, What Other Worlds: Postpartum Poems.

Some Days

You wish never to leave this earth. The weight

of body on body, the pushing of mower and stroller,

the heart's beating along its private and collective

spectrum: terror, anger, joy, expectation. Today,

the opening of the seams of the body into heron-green

water below the surface blue.

From The Quiet Eye: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Nature (Laurel Collective anthology, 2009)

Suzanne on Writing Poetry

I consider my voice as a poet to be a voice for both spirit and soul. I remember reading James Hillman on those distinctions and have adapted them for myself. Spirit as air, radiance, clear, clean concept, transcendence, the extraordinary. Soul: ordinary, muddy, earthy, messy, immanent, the material. Perhaps soul when we must keep digging and digging for the poem, and spirit when the poem just emerges almost whole.

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