The Laugh We Make When We Fall (The Backwaters Prize in Poetry)

In Susan Firer’s The Laugh We Make When We Fall, peonies; snow drops, “with all their survivor ecstasies”; “windy caravans of lilacs”; and “Dali Lama-robed “ daylilies act as magnets to attract history—personal and historical—myths, language, facts, love, gratitude, prayers, beauty, and ”all the colors of death and sex.” Family oddities appear in this collection, as well as Catholic rituals, saints, and ghost poets. Always ghost poets: Whitman, Neruda, Thoreau, and Saint Francis.

In these poems, “toads/ pull their finished skins off/ delicately as evening gloves,” and in “Birds” you can look into an injured bird’s neck and see “everywhere it had ever flown…” see “insects, & seeds, & amphibians,/ & even a piece or two of snake.” Using list poems, exploded elemental odes, lyrics, and American sonnets, Firer writes her own survivor ecstasies: “I was buried under/deaths: mother’s, father’s, sisters’ deaths wrapped me/ like surgical wrap. And who and where would I be/ when all their gauzy deaths were removed?” In poem after poem in this collection, Firer begins to explore and to answer that question. This collection is "a wild generosity of spirit," creating an effect that is "sacramental."

Susan Firer grew up along the western shore of Lake Michigan, wher she now lives, writes, and works. She is the author of three previous books of poetry. Her third book, The Lives of the Saints and Everything, won the Cleveland State Poetry Prize and the Posner Award. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Review, Iowa Review, New American Writing, and many others. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.