A Year in Practice

October 2, 2023
Poet Suskin follows up Every Day Is a Poem with a meditative guide that gently leads readers through a yearlong creative cycle shaped by the “essential tempo” of the earth and “energies” of the seasons. For each, Suskin draws out broad themes, such as winter’s focus on rest and restoration; provides free-wheeling “prompts from the planet” (in the fall, readers can contemplate how animals “gather their reserves of food, bury their stockpiles, and store their reinforcements” and consider the ways “we are part of the same cycle”); and includes assorted exercises, from practicing “grounding movement” in spring by “mentally scan your body and writ about the parts that speak to you the most today” to editing in the winter. Studded throughout are the author’s poems, each of which takes visceral delight in the natural world (“Did you not see the full bloom of pink/along the boulevard, same as last year?”). Suskin provides plenty of insight into her own writing process, and readers will be buoyed by her promise that they need not “reinvent the wheel or struggle internally” to develop a perfect system for artistic production. Lyrical prose and a cohesive structure make this accessible to dabblers and committed artists alike.