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Susan Elbe

Goodreads Author

Born

in Chicago, Illinois, The United States

Website

http://www.susanelbe.com

Twitter

Susan_Elbe

Genre

Poetry, Nonfiction

Member Since

June 2007

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/susanelbe

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Susan Elbe is the author two full-length poetry collections, The Map of What Happened, which won the 2012 Backwaters Press prize, and Eden in the Rearview Mirror (Word Poetry) which received Honorable Mention for the Posner Poetry Book Prize, and two chapbooks, Where Good Swimmers Drown (Concrete Wolf Press), which won the Concrete Wolf Press Chapbook Prize, and Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press).

Her poems appear or are forthcoming in many journals, including Ascent, Blackbird, Nimrod, North American Review, OCHO, Diode, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, and Smartish Pace. Among her awards are the 2006 Lorine Niedecker Award, the Calyx Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, The Poetry Center of Chicago 14th Annual Juried Reading, and residen ...more

Combine Editions
Susan Elbe’s books

Average rating: 4.64 · 39 ratings · 3 reviews · 7 distinct works

	The Map of What Happened 4.82 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2013 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Eden in the Rearview Mirror 4.50 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2007	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Where Good Swimmers Drown 4.57 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Light Made from Nothing (Parallel Press Chapbook Series) 4.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2003 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	OCHO #26 (The Travel Issue) MiPOesias Print Companion by Emma Trelles (Goodreads Author) (Editor), Geoffrey Philp, Nikki Moustaki (Goodreads Author) 4.40 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2009	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Borderland by Thomas Ferrella (Photographer), Susan Elbe (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2010	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	[(Where Good Swimmers Drown)] [Author: Susan Elbe] published on (September, 2012) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Susan Elbe…

Susan is Currently Reading

Susan is currently reading

The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All

by C.D. Wright

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Sep 18, 2017 10:47AM

Susan is currently reading

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly

by Denis Johnson

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Sep 03, 2017 08:50AM

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Four-Legged Girl: Poems

by Diane Seuss

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Nov 28, 2016 01:26PM

Susan’s Quotes

“People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush.”
― Li-Young Lee

21 likes

“She shines and nobody knows what to do with her.”
― Linda Gregg

11 likes

“This world is painted on a wild dark metal”
― Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country

tags: last-lines

14 likes

“You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

274 likes

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

tags: august, autumn, fall, nature, seasons, summer, time

502 likes

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Susan’s Groups

¡ POETRY ! — 22630 members — last activity Oct 16, 2025 12:10AM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Friends of City Lights — 527 members — last activity Oct 29, 2018 03:34AM
City Lights Books is a landmark independent bookstore and publisher that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics.

Contemporary American Poetry — 72 members — last activity Jul 22, 2023 07:20PM
A group for those who are reading and writing contemporary American poetry. Feel free to talk about what you're reading, why we should or shouldn't re ...more