Venus in Retrograde
In a voice both lyrical and conversational, Orlando Poet Laureate Susan Lilley interprets various stages of womanhood while parsing the beauty and decay of her beloved home state of Florida. Venus in Retrograde was published by Burrow Press.
Praise for Venus in Retrograde
“Susan Lilley’s clear speaking voice combines with her knack for striking images and metaphors to create a tone that is both intimate and inventive. It’s hard to stop reading these open-hearted accounts that follow her life from girlhood to womanhood in charming poems, often erotic and always richly detailed.” —Billy Collins
“Whenever the Planet of Love twirls in reverse, the resultant mayhem leaves us wired and twitchy, heart-shattered, bedeviled and deliciously disturbed. The Mistress Lilley strides resolutely into the chaos, hefting deftly-crafted stanzas that rejigger our staid realities and addict us to the spin.” —Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art
“The braiding of the sublime and the quotidian wends itself throughout and becomes a powerful reckoning of one’s life. Lilley’s voice is steeped in hard-earned lyrical wisdom, one that surveys life with an inter-generational lens.”—Brian Turner, author of My Life as a Foreign Country
Satellite Beach
"Lilley is a mystic of the exact physical detail, literally a visionary: “I see my old neighborhood in grainy Technicolor,/the turquoise Thunderbird next door,/the parachute swing on the camphor tree.” It’s a charge when you rediscover how swiftly a taut singing line creates time, place, character, fate. And Lilley has her own canvas: an edgy New/Old South, inflated and diminished by the promises of technology. You’ll recognize these landscapes, but you won’t have read about them quite this way elsewhere. Satellite Beach is a collection to cherish." —D. Nurkse
"In these sun-drenched, unapologetically atmospheric stanzas, Susan Lilley comes of age in Florida’s frayed paradise, rooting us squarely in the midst of its contradictions and charm. These are tales of a woman lyrically and personally linked to the rhythms of a region. When that woman moves out into the world–to tackle the challenges of sexuality, love and motherhood–the resulting poems shimmer with an insistent and resolute pulse. This debut is remarkable, and startling in its assurance." —Patricia Smith
"Susan Lilley knows the alchemy for transforming joy and grief into consummate poems. From pulsing celebrations of teenaged road trips (possible because 'we lied, we lied, we lied') to moving elegies like 'Bees in Mourning' and 'Champagne Road, Satellite Beach is a passionate and deftly crafted look at a life deeply lived." —Theodore Deppe
Night Windows
Night Windows was co-winner of Yellow Jacket Press’s chapbook contest for Florida poets in 2008.