Susan McLean is a fantastic poet who has just released her second book of poetry, “The Whetstone Misses the Knife.” To commemorate this, she had a reading in CH 201 on Oct. 20.  She was introduced by Marianne Zarzana, who details how McLean was on sabbatical last to travel and pursue her writing. McLean dedicated her reading to Phil Dacey, a former SMSU professor and poet.

As McLean started reading her poetry, a sense of hilarity and seriousness simultaneously filled the room.  McLean choose some funny poems, and some dark ones, but all of them were fantastic, rolling off her tongue like the professional she is.  Amazingly, she has memorized all or most of her poems, making it easy for her to make eye contact with the audience, which is almost half of the experience.

Some of the poems that McLean read include “My Evil Twin,” “Instructions for Climbing and Descending,” and a poem that’s not in the collection, “Family Ways.”

The thing that McLean excels at is her wit and her ability to write in form.  All of her poetry is in a form; there is no free verse.  She states that it is because it makes you think about your poem, giving it more life and just making it more fun to write.

After the reading was over, McLean allowed the audience to ask questions.  One question regarded how McLean picked her titles. She said that she picked her titles first, and built a poem around the idea that the poem created.  Feminism is a big part of McLean’s work;someone asked if anything would be different if McLean wasn’t a feminist, to which she responded: “I wouldn’t be a teacher if I wasn’t a feminist.

Susan McLean is an amazing writer, speaker, and person overall, and you would be doing yourself a favor to pick up her new book.