Face Up

WINNER OF THE 2021 OLEB BOOKS POETRY PRIZE

Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems is a volume of unmistakable power. Defying social expectations, Suzanne Nielsen writes “I was born in the mid-fifties with fists for hands because / in utero / I knew life wasn’t fooling around.” As she explores recurrent themes of physical illness, depression, and addiction, she demonstrates self-awareness gleaned from a life lived fully.

Suzanne Nielsen’s poems are peopled with wry survivors attending to their lives with purpose and humor. A newly sober friend will “jingle his medallion in his pocket / and mimic a canine sense of direction.” An adult navigating clinical depression will “climb into bed wearing . . . street clothes that haven’t seen the streets for weeks.” Relationships form in unexpected ways. Bertha from the Midway “swore to sit on them, / and I swore to watch her back, / and we became best friends for those ten days.” In these poems of tenderness and grit, sorrow is always accompanied by wonder.



“Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems is a powerful testimony of survival.



It’s a force to reckon with, deserves to be in any library strong in contemporary poetry and women’s writings, and ideally will assume its place of power in book club discussion circles. There, poetry can take on a new role as a major influence in and focus on living a passionate, rebellious life that eschews the mundane.”



D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review