Could Love a Man

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Susan Stenson’s first collection of poetry reads more like a third or
fourth publication. Stenson is deft in her wordplay. Her clever poems
feature a voice of such confidence and experience that the reader cannot
help but relate, fall into, and enjoy her work, even when the moment
presented is tragic or uncomfortable.

“You Were So and So” presents the discovery of infidelity and an
aftermath in which the perpetrator is “so sweet running after me / all
naked and Lucy-warm, / in that jam-it-up-your-ass night / air.” (Turn
to any poem, and you will likely find a similarly jaw-dropping phrase.)
In “Daylight Savings,” “our clocks / speak the way one / candle
burns when / passion’s spent.” In “Visitor,” “the child [is]
so small he almost disappears / when she holds him / up to the light.”


Stenson is a poet to watch. No library that maintains a section of
Canadian poetry should be without Could Love a Man.