East of the River

Endorsement for ITYSK

Suzanne Nielsen speaks to me from the America that I do not work for; the America that doesn’t intimidate me. Her poems, barely grammatical, are disturbing collages of monotony and irony from a country that has suddenly realized things have slipped out of control. Take, “3.14159″, for example, where the day begins with a cup of coffee, more coffee and “watching static,” and comes to a close “sitting in the center of room and waiting for an impression.” It is this monotony that recurs in poems like “1861 to 1864″ and “Pre-nuptials” revealing the disturbing dimensions of a world where “nome de plumes exist for a reason on the Internet; nobody is left responsible.” Responsible for genocides, famines, bomb explosions that leave hundreds dead in a split second.

In a way, as I see tall skyscrapers rise in my country on what was farmland a few years ago, her voice seems prophetic to me. We’re running and running hard to get somewhere, not sure whether the journey is worth it in the end.

I Thought You Should Know is a powerful book and Suzanne, one of the few American poets that I connect with immediately. Which is probably a testimony to the global relevance of her work.
- Samartha Vashishtha

Preface by Susan Williams

I don’t know if Suzanne Nielsen is semi-literate or a freaking genius, or if one blots out the other. Most days she doesn’t know a plural from a possessive. She’s hazy on subject-verb agreement and homonyms are not her strong suit, though I suppose it could “reign and thunder” in a poet’s world. I suppose a poet could “break” as well as “brake” for geese.
As in her first collection, “East of the River,” Nielsen pokes holes in pretense, fastens on the hilarious failure. Her characters–Gloria LaVon, Cherrie Winthrop, Angel Olson, Theo Fearling, and my favorite, Big Bertha–hang out at rummage sales, Foodtown, the Lava Lounge, a double wide Airstream. They are borderline freaks, a cast inspired by Edgar Lee Masters as well as the East St. Paul neighborhood Nielsen grew up in.

“I Thought You Should Know” is prefaced with an Oscar Wilde quotation: “We should treat all trivial things very seriously, and all serious things in life with sincere and studied triviality.” The line between serious and trivial blurs in this collection, or maybe it is more accurate to say there are no trivial lives here. Wandering, smoking, watching TV, bidding on EBay, reading the obits or getting baptized, these people reel you in. The seemingly trivial is the stuff of journal entries; the poet brings control. The best poems in “I Thought” walk the line between control and spontaneity. Nielsen’s gift lies in storytelling, in bringing an untidy life to life with a few strokes, in perceiving the hidden web beneath the ordinary. In diving so seamlessly into a mind that the water does not ripple.

Sampling from ITYSH

Coverage in America

Theo Fearling walked uneven on the perfected pavement. He wasn’t inebriated; he was a half inch off on the left leg, just enough to cause a slight disturbance in his gait. To justify this impurity Theo went to work for Ringling Brothers as a handstand artist while performing ballet movements that he called “poetry among limbs.” He eventually lost his ability to stand upside down and succumbed to lyrics. Today Theo owns a second-rate scooter that his insurance declined to pay for, and he lives in debt like the purest of Americans with the thought of hiring an insurance adjuster.

Freeze Frame

How many mornings
has the sky warned me
to carry an umbrella
So I married a man
who’d never owned
an umbrella
He’d never owned
a camera…of course
I didn’t know this
when I met him
I didn’t know this
until four years later
when we were arguing
about the foreboding sky
The sky too gives warnings,
I said. He just looked at me
and reached up, grabbed a piece
of that sky and said
this is how close we are to illusions
and this is why I will never
own a camera, an umbrella;
this is why, my dear wife,
meteorological observations
are negatives in a captured frame
that make the sky want to cry.

Introducing Miss Aries

Tonight in the Lava Lounge Miss Aries turns up the heat
All the while spit curls hold a pose,
breathe through your nothse and look me in the eye,
that’s right look me in the eye,
she warns as those who remain unaffected by the pressure
gasp and wonder whose child is this
that holds every hair in place and carries a lisp?

Storm Drain

She said she walked away due to dorm strain
that resulted in irreconcilable differences
and
to
make
matters
worse
the drain in the back closet
that was once a bathroom
backed up and caused chaos throughout the two-story
to
include
blamingshamingstaining
so much so that the elders upstairs
prayed
for
it
to
rain
upon which the sky opened to let the storm drain.

The Day Cherrie Winthrop was Born Again

Cherrie Winthrop decided at the height of menopause
What she really needed was total immersion of the Holy Spirit.
At River’s Trust Baptist Church one
Palm Sunday morning she would take the plunge.

She’d prayed about her fear of water at previous dusk
but fear still dampened her face and made her palms slippery.
By dawn day of, Cherrie dug out of her closet
her favorite Cleo sling backs, metallic white to match her gown.

At 10:00 a.m. Monica Connelly sat at the organ playing
“Nearer, My God, to Thee” as Cherrie’s cue.
The fishing sinkers she’d slipped inside the hem
of her white gown were intended to weigh it down.

Alta Latessa’s baptism last month previewed Fruit of the Looms because she hadn’t thought of sinkers. In addition Alta lost her footing on the third stair so at the last minute Cherrie superglued the Cleos to the soles of her feet. Alta would be in the
congregation, most likely in the front pew.

At 10:10 a.m. Cherrie embarked on her journey down the six steps
into the pool of water; her gown obeyed, and a cloth was placed over her face
while she was immersed. When Cherrie rose again, her waterproof makeup remained in place; a miracle second only to her second chance at life.

Translocation

Geese were about yesterday for within two miles
I’d counted 17, a group of eight flying in an almost uniform V
a group of five flying in a row, four more following behind
at different speeds. One in the road flattened
with its wing perched up toward the sky.

Later that evening I am standing in line outside
a theatre thinking about smoking when a student I’d
had in a writing class approaches me. I hadn’t seen her
in many years. Names don’t always come to me, but if I think back
to what someone has written I can usually recall the name,
such was the case.
I asked if she was still writing.
I told her she looked happy.
She told me two weeks earlier she’d had surgery.
Her partner needed a kidney and hers matched perfectly.
Two weeks ago? I said. And look at you, who would know?
Our eyes locked, and for a brief moment I saw in the reflection of her
eyeglasses my new haircut, in the shape of a kidney.

You saved your partner’s life, I said, drifting back to the street
back into the evening chill and the hum of the traffic.
Oh no, she said. He saved mine when he encouraged me to write.
Off she walked, but as I watched I saw her wings spread and take flight.

I Thought You Should Know

You want to hear a funny story? This really happened to me. Once I went to Bayfield Wisconsin and I stayed at this bed and breakfast place. That afternoon I went to a flea market and bought a bunch of old signs, all in the shape of hexagons. I brought them back to my room at the B & B and set them on the ledge on the wainscoting so I could look at them all. A bellhop came and rang my door. This was a real nice place. All decorated fancy schmancy. When I went to answer the door the bellhop came in and looked around like he was in the wrong room. Isn’t that a funny story? I just remembered it. I thought you should know.