Susan Blackwell Ramsey
LightNews LightNews
banner
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Susan Blackwell Ramsey
@blackramazoo.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.2K following 920 posts
Poetry in The Southern Review, 32 Poems, Ecotone, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry … Gardening, knitting, inessential information and digressions. Geriatric MFA from Notre Dame. Book is A Mind Like This (University of Nebraska) she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Kalamazoo out in force for No Kings
Young woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty and standing on a tastefully draped stepladder, waving a flag next to a sign saying Refuse to Bow.
October 18, 2025 at 7:15 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
I just barked “oh, NICE” to an empty house. (From 32 Poems)
Poem by Amit Majmudar from the journal 32 Poems
October 7, 2025 at 1:13 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
The oriental lilies got out of hand. Started with three, but one was a seven-foot monster the first year and mow has minions. Does smell like a harem should, though.
A thicket of pink and white lilies shaped like starfishes Mind, the pelting rain made the corral string relax and made them lean, so hard to estimate average height — five feet? But the ringleader in the center of the jumble has got to be six feet high, at least. I can count 35 blooms, and most stems have more buds coming, and some stems haven’t started. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
July 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Ecotone’s Issue 37, The Moon Issue, is pure treasure, and any time I find a poem by Hailey Leithauser it’s an undeclared holiday.
A jaw-dropping poem by Hailey Leithauser to memorize immediately. Thank me later.
July 10, 2025 at 1:20 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
They’re really too sophisticated for this frowzy cottage garden, but we tuck our shirttails in and try to stand up a little straighter when the Japanese iris bloom.
#gardens #flowerreport #iris
Two purple-pinstriped Japanese Iris with four gold eyes and three deep purple curled upright doohickeys at the center. In the background a magenta foxglove flops and loses all self-respect.
June 23, 2025 at 8:15 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Ooo, which? Here’s Olivia Rose Austin yesterday. #flowers #roses #DavidAustin
Cluster of six pale pink roses, deeper pink in the middle, with one more and two buds hiding in a corner. It looks like the rose you would name after a baby granddaughter and forms a chest high, arms-wide bush, bless its wee heart.
June 21, 2025 at 2:53 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
You go away for a week and the whole thing explodes. #gardens #flowers
Early morning photo of a garden of mounded and climbing roses in a range of pinks and whites, punctuated by stalks of mostly magenta (well, you can’t control that — they revert, presumably in the garden of Eden) foxgloves, separated by grass. Deck view of a board fence behind a bed of magenta foxgloves, white peonies, pink roses, and a bush of Jens Munk pink roses that’s taller than fence, five feet wide toward the top and listing drunkenly to the left Late afternoon shot of a garden where patches of grass separate mounds of shrub roses in shades of pink and white, magenta and (one) apricot foxgloves and a climbing pink roses that’s taller, ‘Generous Gardener,’ supported by a wooden pyramid that’s in there somewhere.
June 17, 2025 at 10:29 AM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
All righty, the first of the true/herbaceous peonies (‘Paula Fay’) makes her entrance wearing red to the debutantes’ ball. Well done, Jezebel. #gardens #flowers #peonies
Two scarlet peony blossoms with huge yellow puffs of stamens in the middle, against a background of their own deep green leaves and some lady’s mantle getting ready to hoist little chartreuse blooms Larger view showing five open blossoms, more lady’s mantle and a sprig of goddamned variegated bishops weed.
May 29, 2025 at 7:01 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Our alien overlords are setting up base camp in an innocent foxglove. Take the appropriate measures, not necessarily excluding fire and the sword.
A foxglove about eighteen inches high which begins as three stems with normal buds which meld into one wide stem with the buds morphing into something like a rectangular green fur shako.
May 27, 2025 at 5:01 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Rosa alba, always the first, for which the bees are grateful (meant to photograph one, got a wee bonus! Usually it’s bumbles.) can’t kill it with a flamethrower and in warm days it’s so fragrant you can smell it in the house.
Single toss alba bloom, five white petals with yellow stamens, in which a bee or wasp with recurved antennae is wallowing while a minuscule sweat bee hovers above it. Taller than the deck rail and bigger around than a thorny bushel basket, a bright green bush of Rosa alba, covered with twenty or so single white roses and buds.
May 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
The tree peonies are starting! First one out of the chute ~ #flowers #gardens #treepeonies
A tree-peony bush, about two feet tall, with four cabbage-like buds and a fully open flower hiding behind The fully open tree peony, about the size and shape of a medium cabbage, pale pink outer petals peeling back from dozens of deeper pink ones, above deep-cut bright green leaves.
May 12, 2025 at 9:27 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Babel 17 is so much to me.
Squeeeee picture of me accidentally running into Samuel Delaney at Boston AWP in 2013
April 19, 2025 at 1:24 AM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Kalamazoo!
April 16, 2025 at 7:54 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Spring in west Michigan has decided to phone it in this week — two days peaking in the 30s — but hey 5)3 moss is in bloom! #gardens #gardening #plants
A patch of moss erupting in a fluff of a zillion green threads topped with minuscule chartreuse beads.
April 9, 2025 at 12:13 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Okay, the forsythia’s blooming. I’m gloving up and going out to prune roses before my daughter’s baby decides to arrive. At last count I think we had 73, mostly old roses and David Austen English Roses. Wish me strength. Hang in there, Iris.
Daughter and son-in-law at demonstration holding sign that reads “36 Weeks Pregnant and Waddling for Human Rights “ Four-foot mound of pink and white roses Litchfield Angel and … Rose Austin White garden tripod supporting slightly wahoo pink climber Generous Gardener Vase of cut English Roses in coral, yellow, cream, pink and white, with chartreuse lady’s mantle filler
April 6, 2025 at 3:50 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Also Evanston!
Pregnant woman holding sign that say 36 WEEKS PREGNANT AND WADDLING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
April 5, 2025 at 7:20 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
My youngest at the Evanston protest, bless her. Waddle on!
A couple, the woman very pregnant, holding a sign that says “36 WEEKS PREGNANT AND WADDLING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS “
April 5, 2025 at 6:21 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
And some say he’d add “… three times.” Take heart, Michigan. By my count, this is two. (Magnificent calligraphy by Chris Orsolini) #flowers #gardens #courage #resiliance
Graceful calligraphy sayin “It’s never spring in Michigan until it snows on the tulips,” flanked by a watercolor painting of three red tulips dotted with snow.
March 20, 2025 at 12:17 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
You cannot keep Rosa alba down, even mid-March in Michigan, the little dummy. She just has to be first. (And she’s the bumblebees’ favorite wallow.)
Close-up of dead-looking sticks bristling with spines and with bright green leaf buds emerging every few inches.
March 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Funny you should mention that…
Hand-knit baby jacket and cap in red, black, gray and white.
March 10, 2025 at 10:54 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Not sure they’re reading the room with this one…
Advertisement from a craft site for a “mood blanket.” Temperature blankets, where you knit two rows every day representing the temperature, were a fad, so the suggestion here is for those two rows to represent your daily mood. The kit is largely in pastels “but feel free to swap out our colors for something that better represents you.” Um.
March 10, 2025 at 6:22 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Photograph of a flag at half-mast next to the Capitol dome.
January 20, 2025 at 9:05 PM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Well, that’s the dining room
Three adjacent eight-shelf bookshelves mostly full of books mostly rearranged in alphabetical order after the time the youngest child started to organize them by color but gave up halfway through because there was too much brown. Also visible are a reproduction of the criss of San Damiano, Big Bird, a stolen Hofbrau House stein, Christmas M&Ms and an appalling number of miniature and unopened whisky bottles.
January 20, 2025 at 12:22 AM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
Not that Carter would be that petty. But I am.
December 30, 2024 at 11:23 AM
blackramazoo.bsky.social
My delight when I realized the designer of my book’s cover (not credited in book!) chose Shannon Rankin’s “Synapse,” which, like much of her work, is made of maps!
Cover of Susan Blackwell Ramsey’s poetry book A Mind Like This, which is about digression and trivial connections, where neural-ish loosely connected units are made of thinly sliced road maps
December 18, 2024 at 3:04 PM