Ticket2write• Show poetry

I am Susan Donahue, a Chicago native who has recently relocated to Rogers, Arkansas in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.  I taught genre fiction at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, but my interests are more in poetry than popular fiction. I look forward to practicing my craft here and taking some classes at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Some poetry is written for the page, other poetry is intended to be spoken. I tend to prefer the latter. I like to participate in public readings and gatherings of poets, and I encourage others to do the same.

Inspiration:   I love this quotation from Jack Kerouac, the writer and poet who defined the Beat Generation:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everbody goes 'Awww!" ~ Jack Kerouac

It is good to value what is unique, strange and interesting about individuals who do not fit any mold.  I hope others will see what may be unique about me and the fire that burns within me through my writing.  I will always seek out the slightly mad ones and listen.

Good advice:  "The good poem maintains a delicate balance between strangeness and familiarity.  The author must make the familiar strange enough to be re-seen or re-felt by the reader.  The truth is always a little strange because the conventional world has little interest in the truth, and regularly accepts packaged versions of it.  But a poet should never be strange for the sake of being strange; the purveyor of such poems is at heart a sensationalist, and is insufficiently interested in the human condition.”  ~ Stephen Dunn

More good advice:  "All languages have grammatical rules, especially regarding the written word. This is simply because if what we say is not received as intended, communication can become very cumbersome, and often costly. We all make mistakes in the way we express ourselves. That does not mean that we completely abandon accurate grammar in any language."  ~ Trevor Harris