~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of January 2026 ~
Tag: Susan Rich
Broken Sonnet by Susan Rich
Broken Sonnet
How do you begin a poem when you know
How the story ends? Even with a dog,
Joule! who traveled everywhere with him,
Even with his student whom he taught to listen
To each human heartbeat, to open a central line;
Even caretaking U.S. Veterans and with just one
Small camera curled in his right palm like a charm, he—
A kind man (in each account) an activist, Minneapolis—
Light-skinned, bicycle fanatic, in a resonant voice he keeps asking
Are you okay? helping the woman being pepper-sprayed
up from the cold street, making sure she can breathe.
Even then.
for Alex Pretti, 1988-2026
*
Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor/editor of three anthologies. Her recent books include Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds, Blue Atlas, and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems. Susan co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems with Kelli Russell Agodon and co-edited, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders with Ilya Kaminsky and Brian Turner. Her other poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award. A winner of the Crab Creek Review Prize, Times Literary Supplement Award (London), and a Fulbright Fellowship. Rich’s poems appear in the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere.
Still, Resilience by Susan Rich
Still, Resilience
On the night of 14 April 2014, exactly 276 female students were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The Jihadist group, Boko Haram took full responsibility.
Called back for their Physics final
the girls return
with their sharpened pencils,
no one wanting to fail,
no one able to imagine
anything worse than an F.
In the imagined classroom,
I watch the students
take their exams—
heads bent over small desks.
Teaching across the border
In the pink earth of Niger, what did I know?
How could they know
anything beyond their assigned
problem sets, too intent
on memory to hear the slap-drop
of worn boots, smell
bitter dust rising around
the armed boys who appeared
more like lost extras
from an independent slasher film
than soldiers of Boko Haram.
And how did the girls react?
Did they spiral down
the stairwells holding their slender
blue notebooks?
Or were they so intent
on their hopes, our hopes,
that they simply kept on writing—
*
Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). Susan co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) with Kelli Russell Agodon and co-edited, The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (McSweeney’s) with Ilya Kaminsky. Her other poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA Award. A winner of the Crab Creek Review Prize, Times Literary Supplement Award (London), and a Fulbright Fellowship, Rich’s poems appear in the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, VQR Online and elsewhere. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press. Blue Atlas was a Finalist for the Washington State Book Award.
ONE ART’s October 2025 Reading
We’re pleased to announce ONE ART’s October 2025 Reading!
Date: Sunday, October 5
Time: 2:00pm Eastern
Featured Poets: Susan Rich, Shawn Aveningo-Sanders, Faith Shearin
>>> Tickets Available <<<
Free!
(Donations appreciated.)
The official event is expected to run approximately 1-hour.
After the reading, please consider sticking around for approximately 30-minutes of Community Time discussion with our Featured Poets.
*
~ About Our Featured Poets ~
Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her most recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation). Susan’s previous poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World–winner of the PEN USA Award. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press.
Shawn Aveningo-Sanders’ poetry has appeared in journals worldwide, including Calyx, ONE ART, Quartet, Timberline Review, About Place Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and many others. She is the author of What She Was Wearing and her manuscript, Pockets, was a finalist in the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest, which is forthcoming from MoonPath Press. Shawn is two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. A proud mom and Nana, she shares the creative life with her husband in Oregon.
Faith Shearin’s seven books of poetry include: The Owl Question (May Swenson Award), Telling the Bees (SFA University Press), Orpheus, Turning (Dogfish Poetry Prize), Darwin’s Daughter (SFA University Press), and Lost Language (Press 53). Her poems have been read aloud on The Writer’s Almanac and included in American Life in Poetry. She has received awards from Yaddo, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her essays and short stories have won awards from New Ohio Review, The Missouri Review, The Florida Review, and Literal Latte, among others. Two YA novels — Lost River, 1918 and My Sister Lives in the Sea — won The Global Fiction Prize, judged by Anthony McGowan, and have been published by Leapfrog Press.
If You Knew by Susan Rich
If You Knew
this would be the final person
you’d ever kiss; this the last toast-
scented neck you’d lean towards
under an arched earlobe—
then perhaps you’d rest a minute,
more inhaling anarchist curls
casting curtains around your heads.
Even if this were just a penultimate touch:
neckline, lips, scent of apples—
what more could you ask, except
for time to slow—
then stop—as if in a children’s game
of statues, or in the fable, where
couples stumble into an underwater cave
opening outward towards a new country—
similar to the summer you turned twenty
and interlocked fingers with a stranger—
his limbs winged with a bronzed shine.
How this came together escapes
you now. What remains
are the tracks of his hands—
the most intimate touch,
until now—intuited as
in the way a cloud color transforms
in the indigo bowl of sky,
all of itself and another.
The way the sacred world
above the collarbone captures us
pinioned, tucked in, and never
in want of anything more.
*
Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Her most recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) and Strangest of Theatres: Poets Crossing Borders (Poetry Foundation). Susan’s previous poetry books include Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue–Poems of the World–winner of the PEN USA Award. Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds is forthcoming from Raven Chronicles Press.