It’s been 25 weeks since I started this blog. For those of
you who’ve been reading since the beginning, thank you! And yes, I know it’s
not officially six months until next week but happy anniversary!
For any of you who think you’d love to write, but worry it’s
too late to start now, I’d like to introduce you to Susan Cohen. Susan is an
amazing woman, a true inspiration, and she didn’t start writing poetry in a
dedicated way until her career as a journalist was winding down.
I first met Susan at the Tomales Bay Writers Workshop a
number of years ago. We were in Mark Doty’s group on “crossing genres”. I had
always been envious of writers who could write more than poetry. I wanted to
learn the “secret”. Susan told us all that she was a journalist. Wow! A
journalist writes facts. A poet writes their heart. How do those skills learn
to cohabit?
Since that workshop, every time I see Susan’s name, she’s
winning a prize for her poetry. Clearly she learned how to make it all work. So
I asked her. Following is a bit of her story…
 |
| Susan Cohen |
Susan grew up writing poetry, as I imagine a lot of us did.
When she was 17, she was rejected from the first workshop she applied to. She
thought that meant she had no talent, and didn’t write another poem for almost
thirty years.
(I totally get it. There are workshops I STILL won’t apply
to because I know they’ll reject me. It’s ego. It’s chestpounding. I know
there’s criteria, and rules and who knows what but I still think it’s terrible.
This woman was robbed of thirty years of writing poetry and I think that’s
wrong! If that’s happened to you, don’t believe it. You’re older now. Get back
up on that horse—horses can be very poetic).
As Susan’s children grew, she found herself beginning to
read poetry again. She wrote the occasional poem. She was already a
professional journalist, but decided she wanted to work on craft. Her
journalism fellowship at Stanford allowed her to take whatever classes she
wanted, including poetry workshops, so she enrolled in a local workshop and
began to build a community of other poets around her. She also started to
attend readings. (You know that if you go to a reading, that doesn’t mean you
have to read. You can learn a LOT from watching and listening to other poets
read their work. You can learn a lot about what you should do, and what you
definitely shouldn’t do. You don’t have to sign up for the open mic until
you’re ready. Susan didn’t have the nerve to read until she’d published two
chapbooks and a non-fiction book!)
Fast-forward twenty years or so, take a breath, sit down,
and get ready to be awed by a portion of Susan’s CV (like a bio but with more
things included). She is kind, generous, funny, a good literary citizen and
worthy of all the honors she’s received. If you think it’s too late to do
whatever you want to do, well it might be too late to become a brain surgeon,
but it’s never too late to learn, improve, and keep plugging away at your
craft. So don’t be scared, don’t wait any longer, and don’t give up. You can do
it!
Susan Cohen is the author of two poetry chapbooks, a
non-fiction book, and two full-length collections of poems: Throat Singing, and A Different Wakeful Animal. She was a newspaper reporter, professor at the
University of California Graduate School of Journalism, and
contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine before
receiving a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 1998-9,
where she divided her time between studying poetry and bioethics.
Since then, she's won awards from the Fund for Investigative Journalism
and the National Association of Science Writers, as well as
poetry honors that include the Acorn-Rukeyser Chapbook Award,
New Millennium Writings Best Poem, Rita Dove Poetry Award from the Center
for Women Writers, Anderbo Poetry Prize, Literal Latte Poetry Prize, the
Milton Kessler Memorial Poetry Prize from Harpur Palate, and the
David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize from Red Dragonfly Press. She earned
an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Berkeley. www.susancohen-writer.com.
Tips on How to Become
a Fossil
title of an article in National Geographic Magazine
Tuck your tusks under
a pillow of dirt.
Buzz into the conifers and let resin pin your wings.
Trudge across a lakebed, each foot a stylus scrawling.
Crawl beneath a coverlet of clay
and fire the soil with the last of your heat.
Bristle, every hair an impression.
Harder—textured in
stone—you, too,
may become a vestige and outlast civilizations.
Shifting with continents. Trusting to earth.
* * *
Note from Tobi: There’s a comments section at the bottom of
this post. I do read your comments and I will answer them. Please think of this
as a place for all of us. Ask me questions. Let me know what blog posts you’d
like to see. I can’t write about it if I don’t know you want to read about it.
Happy anniversary!
* * *
Tobi Alfier's most recent collection of poetry is Slices Of Alice. She is also co-editor with Jeff Alfier of the San Pedro River Review. Don't miss Tobi's columns on the craft of poetry: insert your email address in the "Follow By Email" box to the right of this article and you'll be notified every time a new article appears.
