Susan
Cowger
An Interview With
By Karen Mobley
You have a new book. Please tell me something about it, what it focuses on, how did it come to be?
The title of the book is A Slender Warble. It’s poetry. I have to laugh because most people know the answer to “do you like poetry?” is
YES. However, poetry is not found on their shelf. Frankly, to many poetry is closed, full of hidden meaning — meaning lost to them.
Poetry makes them feel stupid. That’s exactly what people said about my abstract sculptures over twenty years ago. I began to write
poems to accompany the artwork as a way to help people find another door, another entrance, into the abstraction.
Over the years I’ve learned the best a writer can do with words is reveal, not conceal. In the case of A Slender Warble, I try to reveal
the invisible, reveal what people call God.
30 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE