Susan Firer Shares Poetry About Lilacs
By Bernie Nguyen

Lilacs were featured in a selection of three poems read by Susan Firer at the Mackinac Island Public Library Friday, July 28, as part of the library's Summer Author Series. Her presentation, "Lilacs in American Poetry, Poetry in American Lilacs," also served as the inaugural reading for the Mackinac Island Poetry Festival.

Lilacs, she said, are in many ways America's great democratic shrub because of their universal adaptability and appeal to so many people. The three poetic styles she selected illustrate the wide range of American poetry tied together by a common image of lilacs, she said, and they are representative of the three current American styles, the traditional metrical style, free verse, and an edgy experimental style that incorporates many ideas and tones into a new, sometimes jarringly-different poetic verse.

Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" was written to mourn the death of Abraham Lincoln, and it is one of the most famous poems to contain lilacs. Mr. Whitman revolutionized American poetry, said Ms. Firer, by taking new ideas and images from the young country to form a uniquely democratic poetic style separate from the traditional, structured forms of the Old World. He sought an American poetry filled with images of America.

Ms. Firer teased out images and symbols for the audience, explaining how the first line of the poem, "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd," set up for the reader both the time and the place in which the poem is grounded; spring, because of the lilacs, and a simple entryway. By drawing these connections between the image and the idea, the reader, she said, has a better understanding of the poet and the poem.

She explained that on the day of Lincoln's death, Mr. Whitman spoke of the "advanced season" that led lilacs to bloom early, and he later said that he could never smell them afterward without thinking of Lincoln's assassination.

In a metrically traditional poem by Richard Wilbur, entitled "The Lilacs," lilacs were used in juxtaposition with wartorn soldiers and used images such as the leaves and buds to add a tangible sense to the poem.

The poem that Ms. Firer used as an example of an experimental work was Gillian Conoly's "Lincolnesque," a poem that reefers to Whitman's work as well as the lilacs. Ms. Firer explained that experimental poems often try to mix up styles and tones by throwing in different lines, quotes, and even languages.

Assisting in the readings were visiting poet Thomas R. Smith and summer residents Jim Bogan and Jim Lenfestey.

Ms. Firer has won several poetry awards. Her latest book, "The Laugh We Make When We Fall," was the winner of the 2001 Backwaters Prize. Her work is often featured on National Public Radio's Writer's Almanac. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and has spent most of her life on the western side of Lake Michigan.