Susan L. Leary is the author of the new poetry collection More Flowers. Her other books include the poetry collection Dressing the Bear. She is also a longtime educator, and she lives in Indianapolis.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in your new collection?
A: I wrote More Flowers over a period of seven to eight years, making it the collection I have spent the longest time working on.
Most of my manuscripts come together in compact, emotional bursts that are in response to a particularly devastating circumstance, such as the sudden death of my brother in 2020, which is at the heart of Dressing the Bear. Poems such as these are driven by an immediacy of feeling that is impossible to ignore, but with More Flowers, I was more reflective.
Time was a real collaborator for me, and as a result, the poems underwent extensive revision, continuously shapeshifting in content, aim and form, and, perhaps, benefitting from a greater degree of intentionality than is customary for me.
I have always been haunted by the “I” of the page, as well, afraid to be too vulnerable or too transparent, and, in a sense, it has been easy to hide behind metaphor.
More Flowers, however, is my most honest and riskiest collection. In my own life, I have often felt invisible, overlooked, and counted out in various circles, so with these poems, I wanted to make space for the speaker’s voice to reverberate beyond those that have always been louder than hers, and that took patience, time.
Q: The poet Cynthia Marie Hoffman said of the book, “More Flowers is a celebration of girlhood and womanhood, richly complex, built from equal parts delicateness and fierce survival.” What do you think of that description?
A: Cynthia Marie Hoffman is a poet I have longed admired, so any words she offered about the collection, I would welcome with much appreciation and excitement! She is a technically brilliant writer of extraordinary heart and imagination, and her perception of More Flowers has been heartening and deeply affirming.
The speaker of More Flowers is certainly trying to prove her worth, to make evident her inner “girl” self, and to call the book equally “delicate and fierce” highlights the speaker’s remarkable capacity to be multifaceted in self-perception and communication.
She is eager to be gentle but also ruthless and thick-skinned, able to counter the various forces she has been up against, familial, societal, or otherwise, with an equal blow. This balance makes me proud of the speaker of this collection, and I am grateful to Cynthia for noting it.
I am especially happy that More Flowers has been considered “a celebration” because it really is one. These poems are an extended activity in self-talk through which the speaker makes her heart, and her philosophies, the priority.
Q: How did you decide on the order in which the poems would appear in the book?
A: Great question! More Flowers unfolds across four distinct sections, each tracing a different stage of the speaker’s trajectory and following a movement from exposure to inheritance to critique to reclamation.
In the opening section, the speaker announces herself boldly--here, look at me!--stepping forward with a willingness to engage herself in front of others.
The second section turns inward, the speaker interrogating her formative influences, particularly the complex relationship with the mother figure and the internalized challenges of patriarchal life.
In the third section, the speaker is older, and experiences have accrued. She is frustrated and a bit cynical, but I have great affection for this version of the speaker because she has earned the right to be critical, to know more, and to refuse.
And, in the fourth section of the book, the speaker finally steps into her own self-guided rhythm and gets her flowers, so to speak.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: With respect to the title, as much as I love flowers--and I really, really, really love flowers--I am most drawn to the word, more, which carries connotations of excess, indulgence, and desire.
There’s an undeniable greediness to it, but with More Flowers, I wanted to explore the love that can exist behind that demand for more--the sweetness, humility, and perhaps even admiration within that wanting.
More Flowers is clearly invested in the emotional unrest of the speaker, but despite this heartache, love, loss, reflection, growth, experience--whatever you want to call it--life remains profoundly worth living.
In this way, the title feels deeply driven by me as the poet looking back with hindsight and saying: all of the challenges this book wrestles with, I would live through that again.
I think I capture this sentiment most outright in the closing lines of the poem “Daytime Manifesto,” in which the speaker declares: “I never / want this to be easy, making the most of a life I never asked for.”
I must give credit to my editor, Kris Bigalk, for the idea of the title, too! All writers hope to be understood, at least to some degree, and I have been lucky to have an editor who often grasps my poems better than I do.
I originally planned on titling the collection after the poem, “Encore to Girlmaking,” and also briefly toyed with making use of “In Lieu of Flowers, More Flowers,” but Kris instinctually knew the title needed to be a quick, encompassing burst of exuberance, and when she suggested More Flowers, we were set!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Creatively, I am in a bit of a fallow period that I am enjoying! But winter is upon us, and as a newer resident of the Midwest--I moved to Indianapolis in 2023 after over 20 years in Miami--I find the season very inspiring: the snow, the lake frozen over, the endless swath of grey sky, the warmth of the apartment, and my dog in her lavender sweater.
The best projects really do seem to sneak up on me, so I am excited by the possibilities of what might strike me next in the coming months.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Thank you so much for this question. Yes!
The third section of the book touches upon my teaching life. I taught Writing Studies at the University of Miami for over 15 years, where I am also a three-time alum, and for poems of this nature to be present in the collection speaks to how much of my personhood was shaped by the personalities, wisdom, dreams, and wounds of so many young people trying to make their way in the world.
Teaching is hard. The emotional labor of it is every bit as taxing as the intellectual work, and nowadays, perhaps more so. I have recently stepped away from this life, which I needed to do, but my interactions in the classroom have deeply altered my DNA.
One of my favorite poems in the collection is “The Kids These Days Want to Be Happy.” Whenever I flip through the book, I always land on it and often read it aloud, sometimes tearing up. In my life, I have gotten so much of what I have wanted, which More Flowers helped reveal to me. I hope the same is true for them.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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