I'm so sorry. I didn't know her personally, but I know this poem, published a few years ago:

https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/201...susan-de-sola/

- it's a marvellous, beautiful, subtle poem, I think, and I remembered it as soon as I saw the thread.

My thoughts and sympathies are with Susan de Sola's family and all of you who knew her.

Sarah-Jane

In this often depressing, macabre world we live in, I appreciate the reality-grounded optimism in Susan's work. She had a gift for finding something life-affirming to celebrate even in seemingly unpromising topics, and her joy in sharing those discoveries permeated her poems.

The poem is significant, Sarah, because her name means 'lily', why she wrote the poem as well as for love of the painting.

She was my Lily. My Lily-love.

Remember this?: https://constant-never.blogspot.com/...t-flowers.html

The last photo -- she's there in the middle of us.

Not that I could ever ever forget it! A decade and a world ago. <3

I never knew her but have heard about her. My sincere condolences to her family and those who knew her better. So very sad. That's far too soon to go.

Shocking! I think the last time I met her was at the Frost Farm several years back, but Susan and I were fellow New Yorkers, we both summered on Fire Island (many years apart) before she moved to Europe, and when we saw each other loved to gossip about the old days. She was a class act.

I just cannot believe it; it won't sink in. I'm totally devastated to hear this news. Susan and I struck up a great friendship at West Chester in 2012.

We had a "thing" where we laughed and joked about trying to match up socks when doing the family laundry. (Susan had many pairs to deal with back then, with her five children!) She took to calling me Socks as a nickname; that's something I will treasure.

Susan was a physically beautiful woman, but also a beautiful person in the emotional sense. She will be missed SO much by her family and friends, many of whom didn't even know that she was ill.

Like Walter, I'll be pulling Little Blue Man off my bookshelf to look at again, in fond remembrance of a poet and friend I loved.

Jayne

Just read Alex’s post on Facebook (where I rarely go these days), and am utterly devastated by the news, impossible to fathom. I only knew Susan virtually (including by mail), but felt close to her - her warmth and sense of humor, her kindness, just a radiant beautiful person in every sense of the word. We both had 5 children, although in different ways, which she expressed in a poem that captured her wit, intellect, humor, poetic sense… And another poem of hers written in the language of a rock! What an imagination, what a loss. She is absolutely irreplaceable and I feel the loss as if she had been part of my family. One can say a life well-lived, she will not be forgotten.

I never met Susan in person, but was sad to see this news on Twitter yesterday. I just knew her as a talented poet here on the Sphere and other places online. Susan's remarkable recent poem "The Hunger Winter" was a finalist in the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award, and just published in Plough: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/cul...-winter-1944-5.

My condolences to her family and friends.

Like so many of you, I'm reeling at this loss. Not only did I enjoy hanging out with Susan at conferences, I had the privilege of publishing a number of her poems in Light and, in 2018, was delighted to learn that "Buddy," the poem I had chosen as the winner of the Frost Farm Prize, was hers. What a great weekend we spent in Derry with the Powows! "Buddy" is part of Susan's indelible collection, Frozen Charlotte, and you can also read it here.