11.9.15: Susan Browne

I know his fast stride,
his windy wheatfield hair, his hands thrust   
deep in his jacket pockets, hands
that have known my body . . . .

                            From "Chance Meeting" by Susan Browne

I have always admired my colleague Susan Browne. Her poems are funny and very moving and real. There is a human in them, though language is still very important, crucial, even. I recommend her first collection Buddha's Dogs.                

Susan poetry has appeared in Ploughshares,Subtropics, Mississippi Review, Gargoyle, Margie, The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, and 180 More, Extraordinary Poems for Everyday. Her awards include prizes from the Chester H. Jones Foundation, the National Writer's Union, the Los Angeles Poetry Festival, and theRiver Styx International Poetry Contest. Her work was nominated for a Pushcart Award. Selected as the winner of The Four Way Books Prize by Edward Hirsch, Buddha’s Dogs, was published in 2004.

She also has a word/music CD with poet Kim Addonizio, Swearing, Smoking, Drinking, & Kissing. Her second book, published in 2010, Zephyr, won the Editor's Prize at Steel Toe Books. She teaches at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.
                                                -- Jessica Barksdale