SUZANNE LEA

“In the most literal way, Like Oxygen, was born at the end of a love affair.” SL

(photo credit: Suzanne Lea)

LEMagazine asked author Suzanne Lea to explore her creative process as a poet. She’s been previously published in the earlier iteration on this platform, the literary journal, LEJ. You can read her essay, The Specificity of Desire here. 

Surprisingly her second submission, a couple years later as we were transitioning from the literary platform of the journal to the more expansive nature of the magazine format, was poetry and not essay. We wanted to ask her about the differences she experiences as an essay writer and as a poet. 

LE Your poetry collection, Like Oxygen, reaches outside the theoretical container of Limit-Experience and pulls to it the libidinal space in a very visceral way? How did you arrive at this space and how did the process differ from your encounter with your essay, Specificity?

SL When you think about it, writing is a strange thing. We pluck words from our lexicon and place them in such a way that the reader understands both the meaning and the intention. Creative writing is even more interesting – creating a path using words in the wild,  words strung together for the first time, creating something altogether new. I write because I have a love affair with language. I write because I love finding new ways to tell universal stories. 

I love the taste of new words meeting for the first time. Words just introduced, taking their first steps off the tongue and in the world. I love big, fat, juicy words. Little, tine, bony words. Dirty word. Holy words Dark threatening, stormy words. I love long, complicated, ego-stroking words and fanciful words that exist only to serve the needs of children and lovers. My favorite, though, is the discovery of a word whose materiality is so organic that a gentle nudge can send it floating like a dandelion on the current of a conversation. These words, when placed together properly, are so sweet as to be missed the instant they are spoken. 

In the most literal way, Like Oxygen, was born at the end of a love affair. I find that to be true of much of my writing. Most of my poetry is written after-the-fact. Although every ending is not tragic, often grief allows for a very specific kind of hindsight. A perspective not found in the midst of an experience.  While we are pushing and pulling, touching and pressing, we only feel our own skin. We only know whether we’ve been kissed or kicked. Afterwards, we often find a sort of aerial view. We become the topographers of our own country.

Writing poetry is the place where I have the most fun with words who were once strangers. Tucked away inside my poem, Like Oxygen, there is something more. Inside what appears to be a song about the libidinal desires, I have secreted away a prayer. Please kiss me properly. Kiss me like oxygen. Kiss me as if you were certain. Kiss me as though you have abandoned yourself to the experience. I ask for these things because I know the tepid tongue of endings – when the lights come up and everyone leaves.  

In my experience, non-fiction storytelling is different. There is a linear quality to creative non-fiction. There is usually a beginning, a middle, and an end. Non-fiction storytelling is experienced as fact. (Or as factual as we are able as fallible humans.) The Specificity of Desire is my attempt at telling the story of my Limit Experience. There is no pleading for more. There is no longing for less. My Limit Experience is measured by a before and after. My experience created a moment when I jumped from who I thought I was and what I was capable of, to the very edge of propriety and then a step further. 

My Limit Experience was life altering. I am not the same person that I was before the events of Specificity. I barely remember the girl who lived in this body without that experience. That can also be said for Like Oxygen. Although the details are drastically different, the same ‘before and after’ exist. Similarly, the act of storytelling closely resembles this dynamic. I pull from my love of language to tell a story. I try to set the stage for what comes after. Both experiences create a longing for something more. Both experiences beg me to step outside the safety of storytelling and run my fingers along the rough edges and smooth surfaces of life.