A review of how to be another

Throughout this fresh offering of prose poems from Susan Lewis, we receive the complete package - that is, the gift of her unique blendings as we listen to her speak in various modes of dialogue with “the other.” These intercoursings come by way of subtle allusions; storied vignettes; and the quotidian queries of universal questions that are answered via daily specifics. “Record your trajectory any way you can” reminds us that the unwritten life may sometimes fire on less than all cylinders.

A contagious friskiness animates these poems, held together with the adhesive of the ampersand. The cadence of these prose poems becomes grounded by Lewis’s use of the ampersand in a way that the connective “and” would not be capable of. The ampersand anchors these poems with its symbolic, and thus metaphoric, weight. Plausible non-sequiturs also abound in these pages, and the oblique nature of the discoursing reaches farther than mere interior monologue.

Within the pages of how to be another, there abides a subtle disjunctive synthesis of loosely linked phrases. These poems indicate how the content, the real meat and potatoes of the prose poem, comes together. By a fusion of often disparate elements, poesis is achieved through the remarkable juxtaposition of image and experience. Susan Lewis shows us the compelling power of prose poetry, chronicling the ebb and flux of the modernity she soundly chronicles.

how to be another is structured in four sections, each headlined by a Latin abbreviation (i.e., e.g., Rx, and viz.). The poems in the Rx section exude a juicy cynical realism found within a series of introductions to various angles and aspects of contemporary life. The tone in some is one of maternal advice, as might be received by a fledgling initially working its wings in preparation for its first flight out of the nest. In others, there are stern reminders, akin to an Old Testament prophet fulminating on our collective lapse. “Pay attention, or the clamor in your head might very well prevail.”

Susan Lewis’ compositions strongly echo another compelling NYC poet, one whose prose poetry deserved far more recognition than it received. John Godfrey’s Midnight on Your Left, and Where the Weather Suits My Clothes were also full of street hauteur and bold panache. The poems in how to be another also reflect a directness and integrity that juxtapose the concerns, but also the empathy, with the encountered other, whether in its collective or interpersonal incarnation.

The compelling power of the prose poem, with its openness of form, lends itself to the ease of the discursive traipse; the phrases shift and then transform as they flow through poetic space, the interior experiences melding with the exterior distances. In how to be another, the vernacular blends smoothly with the lyrical, as the fluid logic of Lewis’s imagination guides us through the eclectic dimensions of her visions, her emotions, and the honest expressions of both. She carries her voice forward with the words of keen insight and cogent integrity. “It’s all well and good to talk of process, but some of us are interested in results.” With bold strokes, the results of this wonderful book speak quite clearly to what this poet has gifted us. 

- Matt Hill