Author Archives: Childress Susanna

Fiction, Tunes, Teaching, & Parenting:

Notes from Somewhere Inside a Poetry Sabbatical

Ten days (I kid you not) after my first child was born, I received a phone call from a press to whom, several months prior, I’d submitted my second poetry manuscript.

We’d like to publish your book!

Naming

I’ve made a tremendous mistake.

I wrote a poem. This, certainly, was not the mistake.

I published the poem. Also not the mistake.

Within this poem, I told a (“based on a true story”) story and aimed, however feebly, at an aching truth, which was not altogether reliant on the facts of the original story

Ode to a Little Less Internet

Okay, I know. It’s like arranging a bouquet of roses while declaiming hothouse flowers. It’s like manning a bulldozer while belting out the Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.” It’s like…well, it’s like most hypocrisy in the motley and subtle ways we allow into the quotidian by blandly calling it “irony.” But yes, I’m still going to write an ode to less internet by, of all things, blogging.

Rejectification

So, we’re at the end of summer. We’re thinking back on all the lounging and the sunburns and the (road)trips and the lemonade and the evenings loud with crickets. Perhaps we’re already looking ahead to the smoky oranges of fall, or we’ve even begun to think of the long, slow crawl through winter. For now, though, yes, we’ll thank the phlox for staying in bloom and global weirding for several more days requiring the frequent application of our deodorant.