Things We Might Miss
Published on 22. December 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
114 pages
978-1-63534-374-8 (ISBN)
Description
The poems in Things We Might Miss play with two main aspects of missing: experiencing loss (or being deprived), and failing to see—aspects echoed in, respectively, the book's front and back cover photos. But instead of seeing missing as altogether negative, the book praises it in one's affections as desirable—for example, it's arguably a good thing to be able to miss someone, and disagreeable to find a person's constant presence a form of browbeating, or a state where "respect fades/in obliged nearness/into a sort of stupor." Accordingly, these poems reiterate how absence can and should be alluring. The themes of distance and positive tension between people pick up on Kierkegaard's caution on total familiarity, as well as author Philip Wylie's complaint, "That's the trouble with love. People think it involves rights."
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
Weight
178 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63534-374-8 (9781635343748)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Susan Stevens has taught composition, literature, and creative writing on the Navajo reservation at Many Farms and at campuses in Tennessee, Georgia, and Arizona, including Yavapai College and Eastern Arizona College, where she partnered with the Arizona Commission on the Arts to direct the Visiting Writing Series. She received a bachelor's in comparative literature from the University of Redlands and a master's in creative writing under the tutelage of iconoclastic poet Jim Simmerman, late Regents' Professor at Northern Arizona University. Finishing Line Press published her poetry collection Things We Might Miss (2017) and chapbooks With Ridiculous Caution (2013) and O, But in the Library (2017). A retired educator and federal employee, she is presently a freelance writer-editor in New Mexico and at work on the obligatory novel.