The Dance Floor Tilts

In The Dance Floor Tilts we witness the unfolding of self-discovery. Through Susan Alexander’s poignant poetry we glimpse the preciousness of an individual’s life on the West Coast, full of universal resonances. She guides us through her work flipping burgers as a teenager with the same spirit as when she describes the joy of wandering the hallways of Parisian museums with her widowed mother. She moves us through the troubles of death and divorce with the same care as she tells us of the quiet of a garden buzzing with hummingbirds and the ocean lapping at its shore. Her subtle wording offers insights into the hidden wonders and mysteries, as in a tapestry, that exist in ordinary lives. In worlds where cow-eyed goddesses steal nymph’s tongues and steering wheels are taken over by octopi, there are no established signposts — there are only ideas where betrayals may leave us disembodied and deadened, or devotion and fidelity may make us whole again. Alexander’s poems find beauty in the harsh and austere trappings of everyday life and embody what it means to bear witness to it all.