Su Smallen studied advanced mathematics at Gustavus Adolphus College, where she majored in English literature and began modern dance training. Her writing reflects these disciplines’ strategies of equations and abstractions. Her career as a dancer and choreographer included production of her own work, and performances with world-class artists. A sense of the theatrical, and this immersion in movement, breath, and sensation, have particularly influenced Su’s poetry.

The poetry in Su Smallen’s first book, Weight of Light, is precise and questioning. Her attention to the smallest details reveals deep passion behind her quiet watchfulness. The wisdom resulting from Smallen’s practiced sight is perhaps what makes this book so compelling. Each poem is a microcosm of a larger truth. There is humor and delight, too, in poems like “Buddha, Beagle,” where a dog speaks: “I have nothing but what you / give, still I will have nothing. / See how happy I am. / Come play with me and nothing.”

In Smallen’s search for meaning we see that everything in the universe moves—even the inanimate and the dead. Algebra, physics, dance, spirituality, and art are all included, and behind these subjects, a clock is ticking. Remarkably, there is peacefulness in her acceptance of the transitory world—even in her knowledge of the inevitability of grief.

Spaced throughout Smallen’s book are her Buddha poems, which serve as an interlude when we can rest or cry or breathe deeply. These poems are simple, but only if we want them to be. They are complex if we want them to be complex, for as Smallen shows us in “Buddha, Prairie”:  “Prairie has no path or many paths / depending on how you are. / Prairie will open a way for you.”

Smallen received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Hamline University, where she was awarded Outstanding Thesis in Poetry, and the W. Quay Grigg Award for Excellence in Literary Study. Smallen received three Pushcart Prize nominations in 2004, for “Graveyard Below Black Lake” (three candles), “Hey Degas” (Laurel Poetry Collective), and “On Poetry” (Water~Stone). “On Poetry” also received an Honorable Mention for the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize. Weight of Light has been nominated for the Lambda Literary Award.