Biography:
Suzanne
Kay Miller has published one book of poems,
Storage
Issues, as well as numerous poems and other written works in publications
such as
The Mennonite, Mennonite Life,
Mikrokosmos, Women of the Plain: Kansas Poetry, and
The Gallery. She has received awards for her poetry from The
Associated Church Press Association, the Evangelical Press Association, and the
Winfield (Kan.) Arts and Humanities Council.
Miller
was born in Indiana in 1956. She first studied at Hesston College, where she received an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts,
but later changed her course and enrolled in Kansas City School of Watchmaking. She eventually transferred to Tabor
College, Bethel College, and ultimately to Wichita State University where she
received a B.A. in English and later a M.F.A. in Creative Writing.
She
was married to Kurt Lawrence in 1977 and has 4 children with him, whom
she raised while earning her multiple degrees. She and Kurt divorced in 1996, and in 2007, she married Jim Buchhorn in her car in
Las Vegas. Her book, Storage Issues, is
a culmination of poems she has written from 1988 to 2008. She now teaches English
at Friends University, in Wichita Kansas, and is working on her next book of
poems, which deal largely with Miller’s departure from the Mennonite Church.
Bibliography:
Miller, Suzanne
Kay. Storage Issues.
Telford, PA: DreamSeeker, 2010. Print.
“Breaking Bud,” The Mennonite, May, 1995.
“Come Close,” The
Christian Leader, December 1993; Voice,
January-February 1995.
“Dreamers,” Christian
Living, January-February 1992.
“Four Sticks,” Festival
Quarterly, Fall 1991.
“Girls Playing Church,” Mikrokosmos,
Spring 2003.
“Grandma,” Lines, 1991;
Voice, May 1994.
“How Can We Know?” The
Gallery, 2007.
“How Much More,” The
Menonite, May 2, 2000.
“In the City at Twenty,” the
Mennonite, May 24, 1994.
“It was the Kind,” Porcupine,
Winter 2006.
“Knowledge of Birds,” Women
of the Plains: Kansas Poetry (anthology), 1995.
“Leaves on the River,” The
Mennonite, October 4, 2005.
“Leaving Wichita Late,” Mikrokosmos,
Spring 2003.
“Living under Authority,” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, October
1995.
“Old Story,” Window to
Mission, October-November 1989.
“On Entering Grandma’s House,” Lines, 1991; Voice, May
1994.
“Prelude,” Mennonite
Life, September 1992 (“Photographs”).
“Prodigal,” The
Penwood Review, Spring 2007.
“Riddles from Mary,” Window
to Mission, Winter 1996.
“Shingles, Socks, and Photographs,” The Mennonite, October 11, 1994.
“Silence,” Voice, April
1995.
“The Matchbox,” The
Mennonite, December 22, 1992.
“The Old Land,” Festival
Quarterly, Fall 1991.
“Thy Waves,” Women of
the Plains: Kansas Poetry (anthology), 1995.
“To My Daughter Jailed in Chicago: 3/20/03,” The Mennonite, November 4, 2003.
“Try This,” Lines, 1991.
“Vision,” Mikrokosmos,
Spring 2001.
“We Place These Stones,” Voice,
May 1991.
“We Wait For Words,” Mennonite
Life, September 1992.
“Wheat,” The
Mennonite, June 14, 1988.
“Yggdrasill,” The
Gallery, 2007.
Online Works:
“Aubade,” The
Mennonite, April 20, 2004.
<
http://www.themennonite.org/pdf/magazine_pdf_74.pdf>.
“Leaves on the River,” The
Mennonite, October 4, 2005.
<http://www.themennonite.org/attachments/pdfs/0000/0041/Issue19-8.pdf>.
Miller, Suzanne
K. "Living Under Authority." First
Things Magazine Oct. 1995: n.
pag.FirstThings.com. First Things Magazine. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/09/003-living-under-authority-48>.
“To My Daughter
Jailed in Chicago: 3/20/03,” The
Mennonite, November 4, 2003.
<
http://www.themennonite.org/pdf/magazine_pdf_63.pdf>.
Interview with
Suzanne Miller:
Tuesday, October 15, 2013 7:56 PM
1. I know from your biography that you pursued
higher education for quite a period of time while also beginning to raise a
family and take care of kids. What motivated you to continue your education
during this time of starting up a family?
I wanted
children, and I wanted knowledge and credentials.
2. How many of your poems would you deem 'Mennonite Poems'? And how important
is being Mennonite to the way you write?
Although I was raised by Mennonite
parents and was a Mennonite church member when I wrote these poems, I no longer
hold or identify with Mennonite beliefs. A friend who recently read the book
said she could see signs of my transformation already in these poems. So, my
former worldview, although disintegrating, was Mennonite, and worldviews are
always important.
3. This project is for a Mennonite Literature class. How do you feel about your
poetry being labeled as Mennonite poetry, and you being labeled a Mennonite
poet? Do you think the title accurately represents you?
I do not think Mennonites feel very good
about it, and I can see why. It is not an accurate title.
4. In your poem "Conservative Bodies," you write about your
"training in defenselessness." Is this poem a representation of a
long-standing rebellion you have felt against the ideas of non-violence in the
church?
I respect
all grand traditions involving nonviolent solutions to conflict. But I have
always felt that silence as a solution to abuse is a continuation of abuse.
5. In the same poem, you write about your mother being a woman who apparently
wore short dresses, which is clearly contrary to Mennonite custom. Was your
mother a non-Mennonite, or what reason was there for people to judge the way
your family dressed?
My mother
and her mother-in-law were different kinds of Mennonites: GC and OM. This was
before your time.
6. You organized your book of poems alphabetically instead of by theme, as in
most other poetry books. Was this a play on the theme of Storage Issues, or an
afterthought, or a personal preference?
I like to alphabetize. I wanted to throw
readers off their paradigms.
7. What are you working on now? Current projects? Will you stick with themes
you have developed already or venture into new territory?
I have a
manuscript of poems overtly related to leaving the church. And I have a short
story in verse, a fiction based on the true story of my great aunt’s suspicious
death. These have not found a publisher. I have not written anything else new,
but maybe that’s because of my bout with cancer this year. If I write again, I
hope for new ideas. I am taking art classes and enjoying that very much.
8. Anything you would like to say about what formed you as a writer or why you
chose this career path?
I like the
care with which words shape or hold images, sounds, and ideas in thoughts and
on pages.
All other known reviews
or interviews:
Various. "June/July Letters." First Things Magazine, June-July 1996: n. FirstThings.com.
First Things Magazine. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.
<http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/10/junejuly-letters-5>.
Storage
Issues Essay
Suzanne
Miller writes in a variety of fashions throughout her short book entitled Storage Issues, utilizing various forms
such as sonnets and quasi-pantoums as well as free verse. In the free verse
poem, “Storage Issues,” the book’s namesake, Miller begins with a quote from
Viktor E. Frankl: “For, in the past, nothing is irrecoverably lost, but
everything is irrevocably stored.” This quote sets the tone for the poem, a
tone of over-the-top, pack-rat-style storage.
In
the first line, Miller sets up a symbol for the “storage issues” she presumably
has—a cemetery—and immediately relates it to “her ancestors’ upstairs
bedrooms.” She lists all the numerous relatives buried there in “orderly rows.”
In the second stanza, line two, Miller poses the question, “For whom and what
are these kept?” Through this set-up, Miller raises the question of how
everything is stored so neatly for the future, her relatives examples of stored
things no longer needed. In line four, Miller mentions the “others of the
congregation,” in an apathy that strangely contrasts the usual heavy focus on ancestry
among those who are culturally Mennonite.
Throughout
the poem until the very end, Miller consistently refers to the human idea of
storage, order and control. In the second stanza, Miller describes the woman in
the poem selling her relatives’ possessions at an auction. Her vivid imagery here,
“boxes of gloves missing fingers” and “unpatched overalls,” brings the reader
into the lives of those who have passed. Through this, Miller conveys an attitude
of triviality to storage, asking the question, “For whom and what are these kept?”
and later answering that everything is “sold or scattered into deeper storage.”
Why store things when no one needs them and they end up lost anyway? In the third
stanza she references not knowing where “that book that should have saved her soul”
is. The questions of this stanza introduce the reader to the idea of needing
the past but not having access to it, to answer questions from the past or relive
an important moment. She ends her poem with a vivid image of the moon—of
nature—followed by the final question: “She wonders what she may need and has
not kept.” The reference to nature in the last stanza is significant as the
only reference to nature in the entire poem. This final juxtaposition shows a
glimpse of the other point of view, that of wild and free nature, with no
attempts at organization or control. She questions whether selling all the possessions
was positive in the end. Will she need something she’s lost?
Overall,
Miller asks the reader to think about the plethora of items and people we store
throughout our lives and questions the necessity of its organization and
structure. She compares this human element to nature, free from such structure
and labels, but in the end questions whether she has stored enough—if she may need
some now-lost object or memory to complete her as a person. Using this contrast
as inspiration, I wrote an imitation in the perspective of how nature’s beauty
can never be preserved well enough without such storage systems.
Storage
Issues
-A Suzanne
Miller Imitation-
The forest he jogs at dawn surrenders damp chill
like his mom’s carpeted bathroom after a cold
shower.
The young squirrel, the aged deer, The murder
victim,
the lonely turtle, the burnt oak and birch
saplings,
Yellow ducklings who no longer follow their off-white
mother,
Lie scattered unevenly under the rotting earth. To
whom do these
Matter? He collects and cleans what he can:
Freckled flowers on looming brown branches,
carbon-color sleek stones,
Unkempt vines tangled together, glistening bones,
spread handfuls of tender water,
Two-note melodies, double rainbows, citadels of
seed grain, tired goose feathers,
Mud-spun twig nests: nothing compliant to a form or
a memory, misplaced
In lack of proper storage. Where is that wild
onion now that should rekindle
Her soul? Where is that evergreen meadow that
should shield her?
Under the sun’s arduous downpour, he wonders
What he may need but cannot hope to keep.
~Original in
Storage Issues, page 82.
