More Flowers

With lyrical acuity, philosophical insight, and deep reverence for girlhood, womanhood, and the wildly intelligent spirit that is the female imagination, Susan L. Leary’s newest collection, More Flowers, unfolds as self-interrogation, tribute, and template for survival. At its center is the figure of the mother, whose fierce brutality in navigating the world offers the speaker ambition, tender affirmation, and a necessary understanding of her origins. In particular, images of nature abound: at each turn, animals, weather patterns, changing landscapes, and the strength and fragility of flowers mirror life’s emotional complications and teach the will to outlast. Most of all, these poems celebrate the idea of excess, that sensation of always wanting more-more time, more meaning, more love, more flowers-because despite every trial and every sadness, this life, quite simply, is never enough.