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November 2000
Susan Mitchell ’59

“Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Lowell wanted to know if the young poet knew any foreign languages.
“‘Yes,’ she said.
“‘Good. If you find you can’t really write, you can always translate. Can you play a musical instrument?’
“‘Yes,’ she said.
“‘Good. If you find you can’t really write, you can always be a musician.’ The older poet was telling the younger in an amusing, roundabout way that life as a poet was not going to be easy. If there were any viable alternatives, she might want to think about them. In other words, get out while the getting is good. Otherwise, commit to your calling as the center of your existence. As it happened, he wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t first considered then ignored. But Susan Mitchell was determined to be a poet.”
—Palm Beach Post

That determination led BFS Alumna Susan Mitchell ’59 to follow her passion and become an accomplished poet—with 16 fellowships and awards, three books (The Water Inside the Water, Rapture, and most recently, Erotikon), and dozens of published essays and poems in anthologies and magazines to her credit.

In 1992, Rapture was named one of five National Book Award Finalists. Susan also has won a $50,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, given to poets who are working towards the acknowledged pinnacle of their careers.

Susan looks back on her years at BFS with fond memories of a host of supportive teachers who encouraged her love of writing. “I recently came across a box of high school papers and reread the caring, thoughtful comments my teachers had written. The importance of learning for the sake of learning at BFS was evidenced in so many ways. From a sophisticated discussion of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” to the impact field hockey had on helping me manage stress and competition, there was a tremendous emphasis on independent thinking at BFS.”

After graduating from Brooklyn Friends, Susan earned her BA in English literature at Wellesley College as a Wellesley College Scholar. She then received an MA from Georgetown University and an ABD from Columbia University. She currently teaches at Florida Atlantic University and has taught at Vermont College, Middlebury College, and Northeastern Illinois University, where she was poet in residence. She has served as the associate editor of Provincetown Arts, a contributing editor of the New England Review/Bread Loaf, and a copy reader at Time magazine.

Susan’s success has not influenced her passion or style of writing. “Fame and all that has nothing to do with where the writing comes from. I try to stay as close to that place as possible,” she says.

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