Joyce Sutphen's Poem Journal 9-17-2013

            Joyce Sutphen’s poems all have images in common with each other regardless of the many topics she writes about.  Much of her work describes thing in detail, like most poets.  But what makes her work unique is the sensory detail: how she writes about “listen with your eyes” in her poem How to Listen.  In this poem, she writes about how not to listen with just your ears but with your eyes, to pay attention to the situation at hand or the gratifying moment.  Otherwise you might miss it or “your whole life might depend on what you hear.”  Sutphen’s poem My Father Comes to the City describes imagery with not just vision but as if you could feel it as well.  She describes the imagery of seeing her father’s hands not just with sight but how it would feel: “fingers thick as ropes, nails flat and broken in the trough of endless chores.”  These few words effortlessly give an image of feeling what it would be like to do the work that he does, the “endless chores” around his home, which is most presumably a farm because that’s where Sutphen grew up.  Her sensory imagery again pops up again in her poem Death Inc.  She writes “high on meth, tires screeching.”  Just her choice of words here sends a clear message of visuals and sounds: a man high behind the wheel, tires screeching into the distance, black marks on the pavement.  All together, Sutphen’s imagery in her poems uses all of the senses to experience what she wants her readers to feel.