Kate Colby, New England poet, is a friend of Suzanne’s.
I struggled with her pithy collection Fruitlands but am now happily into Beauport. Which is not to say I understand everything. But I am loving the spare naturalness of the language.
It hits the same pleasure buttons as deceptively casual-sounding passages in T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, like:
“Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
“Had a bad cold, nevertheless
“Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
“With a wicked pack of cards.”
I don’t know what Eliot is getting at exactly, but I’m crazy about the way that sounds.
Here’s a bit from Beauport that made me smile:
Fashionable Turn-outs in Central Park (1869)
“Those were the days. Don’t you think?
“Sunday driving in plein-
“air affairs of gold
“rims and spokes,
“upper-lip-shaped
“lisping, bespoke
“tailcoats.
“No incendiary pamphleteers,
“here, no lady lecturers,
“temperance hoo-hah …”
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoy it, which, too me, is to understand it. As Gertrude Stein once said of her abstruse play, Four Saints in Three Acts, “Look here, being intelligible is not what it seems. You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking, putting it in other words, but what I mean by understanding is enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you understand it and lots of people have enjoyed it so lots of people have understood it.”
Kate
What a terrific quote! Especially, “You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking”! I will be using that quote often. It speaks to my feeling that with certain kinds of conversation, one is sliding around on the surface of things — or even of talking about something quite different from what one appears to be talking about.