On Susan’s forthcoming book of poetry, Breathing Lessons:
There is a quiet certainty here that reminds me of some of my favorite writers, especially Mary Oliver and Lucille Clifton. It is easy to be in Susan Jefts’ gently meditative poems, not just as a reader but a fellow observer. The natural world is more than just a setting, or a backdrop, but a felt presence. Breathing Lessons is a book to experience as much as read. You’ll savor the journeys on which it takes you.
--Joseph Bruchac, author of numerous stories, novels, and poetry collections, most recently VOICES OF THE PEOPLE, a collection of biographical poems about notable Native people.
"These poems of receptive presentness under ever-shifting skies convey the twin gifts of intense sensory pleasure and a quiet spirit. One slow exhalation after another, Susan Jefts rediscovers herself on the earth. Each moment encountered here, whether beside a frosty meander of the Hudson or on a Vermont hillside, is a bardo through which life flows in losing and renewing itself."
--John Elder, author of Imagining the Earth and Reading the Mountains of Home, and several other books, and former professor at Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf School of English.
These wise, musical poems with their skillful rhymes and chanting repetitions, offer a wonderful lesson in mindful meditation: embodying mono-no-a-wabi in their appreciation and acceptance that everything is ephemeral. The speaker breathes symbiotically with everything present, finding solace from “the loneliness of a body leaving,” in the “Breath of being, breath of becoming,” in joy that asks us to “Come dance until you can’t./ Dance despite winter, despots, greed, /and losses you never imagined,” in joy as our birthright.
--April Ossmann, author of Event Boundaries
On Susan’s Workshops…
“Sue’s poetry groups allowed and encouraged me, for the first time, to become an authentic person. That authenticity has continued to empower and strengthen me.”
B. Wetzel, Saratoga Springs, NY
Susan’s poetry sessions are like soaking in warm pool of words filled with rare minerals. You arrive perhaps empty, perhaps wounded by life. Susan offers you a soft poem to sit in for a while. You are replenished and you want to come back again and again.
Therese Broderick Albany, NY
"I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Susan for several years. Susan knows how to connect with and express essence. She has a natural, easy style that helps her clients get to the heart of the matter."
Lin Murphy, MSW, Saratoga Springs, NY
"With quiet encouragement and guidance from Susan, we each found form for putting our thoughts into words on paper. Other participants in the workshop expressed delight and renewed confidence in their ability to be expressive with words. Susan is a wonderful presence to be guided by in realizing poetry exists within us all."
Trent Millet, Lake Willoughby, VT and Saratoga Springs, NY
Susan's careful poetry selection took me to a deeper awareness of myself. Nature themes of Autumn and word associations connected me with a thread to my soul that was very subtle and healing. It was a great experience for me personally as well as for sharing within the group.
A.H.G., Saratoga Springs, NY
Arrival
By Susan Jefts
When it happens, it just happens. It’s the long night unfolding
into morning. It’s the quick of a thing gelling in mid-air. The slightest strand of wind lit grass.
There might be music, there might not. It might be after many days of work or while driving
into the dark mountains. It might be at the end of a long month, or a longer winter, but there will be
a shift—a relaxation in the body—and a message that comes through and rises above the throat.
There will be a hundred forms of light that arrive just for you, like an invitation. And you will know—that you are welcome here. That you belong.
This poem has appeared in Quiet Diamonds Anthology, 2021, Orchard Street Press.
Prokofiev, in Summer
Allegro, Maestoso, Andante. Each piece rains down— the quick and furious, the slow, the dignified. The unexpected sudden stop. Morning emerges from mist. Afternoon can’t escape evening’s blue sleeve. Trees nod and whisper between movements.
Yes, I remember you on such a night—defiant, reverent, sublime all at once. The song thrush always calling from the highest branch— our eyes floating upward in unison.
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Susan’s poetry and essays focus on sense of place - both natural and urban, relationship, nature and climate. Her poetry collection, Breathing Lessons, is forthcoming in summer of 2023 from Shanti Arts press. Her poetry and essays can be found in various literary journals including Blue Line, Parnassus, Bluestone, Big City Lit, The Literary Gazette, Bluestone Review, ByLine, Zig Zag Magazine, Fired Up, The Healing Muse, All About Mentoring, and in the award winning anthology, A Slant of Light, Birchsong II, the Best of Burlington Writers Anthology 2017, Quiet Diamonds, and Birchsong, in addition to various online publications. Her work can be found online and in various print journals.
Susan Jefts’ workshops use pre-chosen poems, to explore themes such as life transitions, illness, healing, and our connections to nature and spirit. She offers them in Vermont, New York State and elsewhere as small groups, and is also offers larger group experiences to retreat centers, colleges, schools, hospitals, retirement homes, and other organizations. She has presented at various conferences and colleges on topics of writing, personal sustainability, sense of purpose, and life direction.
Returning to Earth
By Susan Jefts
It happened on a day I went to the woods, a day I wore my blue scarf, savored an almond muffin and shade-grown coffee. A day when I thought about my conversation with Tay at the café— images of rocks and roots burst forth, and then a bird in flight. It happened on the day I finished my taxes.
It happened between one thing and another. A book about the soul, a poem about things—shoes and metal, tobacco smoke, and salt. Many things conspired to tell me the whole story, wrote Neruda, not only those things that leap and climb, desire and survive. A day teeming with things: the rust orange on the chimes, the mailbox’s blue. My book’s fibrous threads, the stone tablets in the park—the way they sing, the way they stay still. Now, it seems I can’t say enough about things. How they connect me to a string in my body that binds me to my soul. How every feeling now is a stone or a book, tobacco smoke, or salt.
This poem has appeared in the anthology A Slant of Light, Codhill Press.
Introductions...
I’m Susan, the person behind Many Rivers Life Guidance. I have worked in higher education and in the greater community for over twenty years as a counselor, advisor, and poetry & writing instructor. The work I most love, in addition to writing, is encouraging and guiding people in creating meaningful, fulfilling life paths, whether their work is at the center, or something else.
I received by Bachelors degree from Saint Michael's College in Vermont, and my Masters in Counseling and Education from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY. In 1999 I became certified by the Association for Psychological Type as a Qualified Practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and also completed an additional course for MBTI and Career Counseling.
In 2001, I began a program of studies at the Wordsworth Institute near Washington D.C. where I learned to use poetry and literature with people in therapeutic settings, schools, community centers, holistic health centers, and other settings. Poetry and other literature can be very evocative and powerful tools for guiding people more deeply into their life experience. This is especially true during times of change and transition, whether one is in school and just starting out, in midlife, or well past retirement.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with you on your journey.
Susan.
If you have questions, or wish to make an appointment, please use the Contact page. Back to Home page.
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